“No dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country.” - George S. Patton

“No dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country.” - George S. Patton pic.twitter.com/PKMM2FUvBt

— CJ Hopkins (@CJHopkins_Z23) February 27, 2024

Stop and think then about all those phrases the Pentagon and the Defense Department forced on us, like "Oh, he paid the ultimate sacrifice," or "Thank you for your service."  Or think of the military or martial songs that lull us into this kind of thinking, like the 1861 "Battle Hymn of the Republic," a song by Julia Ward Howe who later renounced war and advocated for the institution of Mother's Day.

Julia Ward Howe, author of the murderous “Battle Hymn of the Republic“—written to glorify Lincoln’s war—had the honesty and decency to reject war after she saw its results.  In 1870, she advocated the institution of Mother’s Day. Here is her radical and moving proclamation:

Arise, then, women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn  All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience.

We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country  To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of the devastated Earth, a voice goes up with our own.

It says: “Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”

Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means  Whereby the great human family can live in peace,

Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask

That a general congress of women without limit of nationality

May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient

And at the earliest period consistent with its objects, To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,  The amicable settlement of international questions,  The great and general interests of peace. 

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, or how Justified, is not a crime.  --Ernest Hemingway

Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.  --Otto von Bismarck

My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth.  --George Washington

I hate War as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity.  --Dwight D. Eisenhower

War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.  --Desiderius Erasmus

In all history, there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interest of the people to whom war is always pernicious even when successful. --Leo Tolstoy

It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the streaks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation war is hell.  --William Tecumseh Sherman