"War is society's dirty work, usually done by kids cleaning up failures perpetrated by adults."

“One of the things that I learned in the war is that we're not the top species on the planet because we're nice.  We are a very aggressive species; it is in us.  People talk a lot about how well the military turns kids into killing machines, and I'll always argue that it's just finishing school.  What we do with civilization is that we learn to inhibit and rope in these aggressive tendencies, and we have to recognize them. I worry about a whole country that doesn't recognize them, because think of how many times we get ourselves into scrapes as a nation because we're always the 'good guys'.  Sometimes, I think if we thought we weren't always the good guys, we might actually get into less wars.”

“Combat is like crack cocaine. It's an enormous high, but it has enormous costs. Any sane person would never do crack. Combat is like that. You're scared, you're terrified, you're miserable, but then the fighting starts, and suddenly everything is at stake, your life, your friend's lives. It's almost transcendence because you're no longer a person. You lose that sense, you're just the platoon, and the platoon can't be beat. And not to mention there's a savage joy in overcoming your enemy, just a savage joy. And I think we make a big mistake if we say, 'oh war is hell'. We all know the 'war is hell' story—it is—but there's an enormously exhilarating part of it.”