Why Men Fight?

Lower animals fight from a variety of causes.. Some fight because, as beasts of prey, they live by killing and devouring. Animals may fight their own kind in a tussle over a mate or some choice morsel of food. They fight to defend their young, their homes, or their own lives. Some are aggressive and go about seeking what they may devour; others fight as a last resort when they are cornered.

Men, being two-legged animals, may fight for any or all of these reasons. But because they have minds capable of being moved by abstract ideas such as honor, glory, freedom, sympathy, justice and patriotism, men fight also for what they believe to be the right.

While some would argue that it is not the interest of society, or even selfish interest, that makes men fight, for "dead men (can) have no interests." And I'm sure that over time the reasons change and that in present tense for us all the reasons are most normally blurred.

Still, a fighting man requires a belief in something greater than himself to muster the physical and moral courage to accomplish the extraordinary in battle. For most that something bigger was their team, their country, and their way of life.

Men derive a sense of responsibility from the situation in which they act and live. This "sense of responsibility", based on an understanding of why the struggle is essential, is the touchstone that makes the fighting man's struggle more than a matter of duty. It is important that men believe in the principles they are defending and understand the enemy as a threat to those principles.

Individualism will most likely remain the hallmark of America and her military. There will always be those that give fully of themselves, subordinating personal gratification to lofty ideals. They are heroes. Men that put a premium on understanding the "whys" of their fight, and then strive to accomplish the mission.

A strong sense of duty punctuated by a consistent example of honor that cultivated an atmosphere of mutually supported individual effort rooted in righteous and democratic beliefs. What other reasons can there be to lead him from small town Missouri to the skies over Germany of World War II.

Duty, honor, country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.

General of the Army Douglas MacArthur
to the cadets of the U.S. Military Academy

Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak. And it is a solemn and weighty responsibility, and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government, or the empty catchphrases of politicians. Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let man label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country - hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of.

-- Mark Twain

Duty

The first duty is to remember. Those of us who have seen war's ugliness know that a battlefield does not honor its dead. It devours them without ceremony. Nor does a battlefield honor heroes. It mocks their sacrifice with continuing misery and terror. It is for those who survived to remember sacrifice, and to honor our heroes.

-- Jim Webb

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

-- George Orwell

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty.

-- John F. Kennedy

War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.

-- General William T. Sherman

Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

-- Winston Churchill

I may not believe in what you have to say, but I will defend....to the death....your right to say it.

-- Voltaire

From time to time, the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Honor

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

-- Dolores Ibarruri ("La Pasionaria")

The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave...

-- Patrick Henry

Nuts!

-- General Anthony McAuliffe, surrounded in Bastogne

War is cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it, the crueler it is the sooner it will be over.

-- William Tecumseh Sherman

Be convinced that to be happy means to be free and that to be free means to be brave. Therefore do not take lightly the perils of war.

-- Thucydides

. . .there is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.

-- Dwight Eisenhower

War: a wretched debasement of all the pretenses of civilization.

-- Omar Bradley

Some people live an entire lifetime and wonder if they have ever made a difference in the world, but the Marines don't have that problem.

-- Ronald Reagan

Country

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value.

-- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis (1776)

No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. You win the war, by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country!

-- George Patton

The justest dispositions possible in ourselves, will not secure us against it [war]. It would be necessary that all other nations were just also. Justice indeed, on our part, will save us from those wars which would have been produced by a contrary disposition. But how can we prevent those produced by the wrongs of other nations? By putting ourselves in a condition to punish them. Weakness provokes insult and injury, while a condition to punish often prevents them.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Diplomats are just as essential in starting a war as soldiers are in finishing it.

-- Will Rogers

The fact that slaughter [battle] is a horrifying spectacle must make us take war more seriously, but [it does] not provide an excuse for gradually blunting our swords in the name of humanity. Sooner or later someone will come along with a sharp sword and hack off our arms.

-- Carl von Clausewitz

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

-- John Stewart Mill

Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.

-- Abraham Lincoln

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