{"quotes":[{"text":"A 'civilization' that makes such a ridiculous fuss about alleged 'war crimes' - acts of violence against the actual or potential enemies of one's cause - and tolerates slaughterhouses and vivisection laboratories, and circuses and the fur industry (infliction of pain upon creatures that can never be for or against any cause), does not deserve to live.","author":"Savitri Devi","tags":["death","life","strength-and-courage","war-crimes","weakness"],"id":20790,"author_id":"Savitri+Devi"},{"text":"The American intellectuals, in their preoccupation with reality, seem to have forgotten that the real enemy is War rather than imperial Germany. There is work to be done to prevent this war of ours from passing into popular mythology as a holy crusade. What shall we do with leaders who tell us that we go to war in moral spotlessness or who make “democracy” synonymous with a republican form of government?","author":"Randolph Bourne","tags":["war","war-crimes"],"id":66193,"author_id":"Randolph+Bourne"},{"text":"For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.","author":"Noam Chomsky","tags":["crime","double-standards","hypocrisy","politics","power","war-crimes"],"id":73725,"author_id":"Noam+Chomsky"},{"text":"I dispute the point that nuclear energy is 'clean' and 'cost-effective'. As I recall, when we first harnessed nuclear power it was to drop an atom bomb on a civilian population, not to save the environment. However, you must admit, the victors are never tried for war crimes.","author":"E.A. Bucchianeri","tags":["american-history","atomic-bomb","atomic-bombs","end-justifies-the-means","enironment","harsh-reality","harsh-truth","history","nuclear","nuclear-bomb","nuclear-energy","nuclear-power","nuclear-threat","nuclear-war","nuclear-weapons","reality","truth","truth-telling","usa","victors","victory","war","war-crimes","warfare"],"id":120655,"author_id":"E.A.+Bucchianeri"},{"text":"At the end of this journey, it seems to me that reconciling the long shadows cast by the uneasy past may ultimately depend on elements so basic that they bring to mind a simple Slav proverb I once came across and never forgot: Eat bread and salt and speak the truth. They are the recovery of fact, public accountability and the instituting of fair trials of one sort or another, to help mark ends and beginnings and to return the moral compass as close to the centre as possible.","author":"Erna Paris","tags":["genocide","justice","memory","war-crimes"],"id":156729,"author_id":"Erna+Paris"},{"text":"The Hierarchic Qualm: The sword kills. But the arm moves the sword. Is the arm to blame for murder? No. The mind moves the arm. Is the mind to blame? No. The mind has sworn an oath to duty, and that duty moves the mind, as written by the Throne. So it is that a servant of the Throne is blameless.","author":"Seth Dickinson","tags":["blame","chain-of-command","discipline","duty","responsibility","soldiering","war-crimes"],"id":214294,"author_id":"Seth+Dickinson"},{"text":"But witnesses incur responsibilities, as anyone who has ever seen a traffic accident and had to go to court to testify, knows. In the new world of globally televised war crimes, the defence of 'not knowing,' or neutrality, will dissolve for everyone. To be a witness or bystander is not a value-free choice but, inadvertently, a moral position; and in this sense the 'guilt' of people who live with the memory of crimes committed by members of their families, or communities, has been unwittingly extended to everyone who watches appalling pictures on the news.","author":"Erna Paris","tags":["collective-looking-away","justice","war-crimes","witness"],"id":229142,"author_id":"Erna+Paris"},{"text":"The new crimes that the US and Israel were committing in Gaza as 2009 opened do not fit easily into any standard category—except for the category of familiarity.","author":"Noam Chomsky","tags":["2009","gaza-strip","gaza-war","israel","israel-united-states-relations","israeli-palestinian-conflict","united-states","war-crimes"],"id":242415,"author_id":"Noam+Chomsky"},{"text":"The burden therefore rests with the American legal community and with the American human-rights lobbies and non-governmental organizations. They can either persist in averting their gaze from the egregious impunity enjoyed by a notorious war criminal and lawbreaker, or they can become seized by the exalted standards to which they continually hold everyone else. The current state of suspended animation, however, cannot last. If the courts and lawyers of this country will not do their duty, we shall watch as the victims and survivors of this man pursue justice and vindication in their own dignified and painstaking way, and at their own expense, and we shall be put to shame.","author":"Christopher Hitchens","tags":["crime","henry-kissinger","human-rights","international-human-rights-law","international-law","law","united-states","war-crimes"],"id":257140,"author_id":"Christopher+Hitchens"},{"text":"War crimes, you say?No matter how many policies you put on paper, in reality, there are no rights and wrongs in war. War itself is a crime. War cannot be justified. I believe, the only people, in this world, whose opinions matter, are the ones who go the extra mile to help other people expecting nothing in return. Soldiers who fight fiercely for their country, the doctors in Sri Lanka's public hospitals attending to hundreds of patients at a time for no extra pay , the nuns who voluntarily teach English and math to children of refugee camps in the north, the monks who collect food to feed entire villages during crises, they are the people worth listening to, their opinion matters. So find me one of them who will say: they wish the war didn't end in 2009, that they wish Sri Lanka was divided into two parts. Find me one of them who agrees with the international war crime allegations against Sri Lanka, and I will listen. But I will not listen to the opinions of those who are paid to find faults in a war they were never a part of, a war they never experienced themselves. I will not listen to the opinions of those who watched the war on tv or read about it on the internet or were moved by a documentary on Al Jazeera. The war is over. The damage is done. Let Sri Lanka move on. So our children will never have to see what we've seen.","author":"Thisuri Wanniarachchi","tags":["arundati-roy","ife","inspiration","paulo-coelho","sri-lanka","war","war-crimes"],"id":279353,"author_id":"Thisuri+Wanniarachchi"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":18,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}