Edmund Burke, 1729-1797

"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. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight; nothing he cares about more than his own personal safety; is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better persons than himself."

John Stuart Mill, 1806-1873

"There is no moral equivalent to this attack. There is no justification for it. The people who did it lost any right to ask for justification for it when they slaughtered four or five thousand innocent people, and to suggest that there is any justification for it only invites this happening in the future."

"One of the reasons I think this happened is because they were engaged in moral equivalency in not understanding the difference between liberal democracies like the United States, like Israel, and terrorist states and those who condone terrorists."

Mayor Rudolph Guiliani, 2001

JAMES: I’m more of a Rumsfeld guy than a Powell guy, you know. I mean, I like the Rumsfeld approach to things, you know. If they're not right, shoot ‘em. I’m not about appeasing any of these crappy little Arab states that want to hold us hostage with oil, you know, and decide they’re going to use terrorism or state support it.

If I had any evidence that any of these countries were supporting one ounce of terrorism I would say ‘wipe them off the face of the earth.’ That’s how I feel and I’ll never change it, and it’s blatantly obvious to the most casual observer that that is the correct position to take, you know. But these other guys want to negotiate and placate and appease and do all that and there’s only one thing you get from eating a bowl of sh-t, and that’s a bigger bowl of it the second time around. Okay?

SAM: So where do you think it’s ultimately going to lead for us?

JAMES: I think it’s going to lead to the fact that probably eventually one of these terrorist diaperheads is going to come around and do something more horrible at which point we’re going to say ‘oh, we finally get it, now let’s finally have a response that means something, which means take out the guys behind it, whether it’s Sadam Hussein or Saudi Arabians or whoever else and take them out BIG TIME.

Get the message across. There’s only one thing these people understand; one thing, and one thing only: abject, unbelievable, horrifying, terrifying fear, and until we’re ready to strike that deep in their hearts and souls, we are going to be at war. Once we realize that they have to understand how powerful we are, not in our actual physical power, but in our heart and soul commitment to that power, only then will this terrorism stop. The only way to stop a terrorist: CUT HIS HEAD OFF.

James Woods to Sam Rubin, 2001