Quotes / The War on Terror

Literature

Dozens of foreign countries still long for a democracy such as ours to be imposed on them.

— Jon Stewart et al, America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction

Live-Action TV

That was when the 21st century truly began.

—Tom Brokaw on the World Trade Center attacks

The Cold War’s over, John. But with no clear enemy to stockpile against, the arms market’s flat. But bring down a fully loaded 727 into the middle of New York City and you’ll find a dozen tinpot dictators all over the world just clamouring to take responsibility, and begging to be smart-bombed.

—Byers, The Lone Gunmen (The Pilot)....in March 2001

"We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly."

— Bill Maher, Politicially Incorrect demonstrating how to lose your job after September 11th.

"You know, we were baited – baited – into an unnecessary war that cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. And, what did it really get us besides an Oscar nomination for Bradley Cooper? Islamic extremists run places where they never even existed before. And ISIS was created. ISIS, who’s now trying to do the same thing to us, bait us. They say, 'Shit in your pants,' and we say, 'How much?'. We’ve learned nothing. The Republican campaign trail today is the same empty, tough-guy talk from chicken hawks. Same as it was in 2003."

— Bill Maher, Real Time with Bill Maher, offering a more nuanced assessment in 2015.

"We, as a country, need to take a hard look at what we’ve done in Afghanistan — which is likely to be destabilized for decades to come. So what can we do about that? Not much now. No amount of brute force or perseverance is going to clear up the clusterfuck that we helped fuck into existence. And I realize that’s a quintessentially un-American idea — to acknowledge that we can’t always control something we want to control or achieve something we want to achieve. But the truth is, we can't. I know that feels futile. But assuming we can go into another country and fix everything by simply imposing our will is largely what led us to where we are right now. We have spent decades claiming that we’re trying to solve the world’s problems — albeit almost exclusively when it helped solve our own — and the result has been, in the words of this professional pearl-clutcher^note Fox News host Laura Ingraham, that we’ve turned one country after another upside down. So we should maybe stop doing that. But in the meantime, the least we could do is help alleviate the humanitarian crisis ahead. Because no matter what happens in Afghanistan from here on out, there is no universe where America bears zero responsibility."

— John Oliver, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, on the 2021 American military withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Magazines

Depending on your perspective, 24 is either a neocon sex fantasy or the collective id of our nation unleashed.

—Newsweek

Music

Now it might be a smart bomb
They find stupid people too
If you stand with the likes of Saddam Hussein,
well, one might just find you

—Clint Black, "Iraq and Roll"

Radio

I don't mean to interrupt the fun, but...a plane has just crashed into the World Trade Center.

— Howard Stern, September 11th, 2001

Stand-Up Comedy

Now, we are in troubled times. When it happened, I thought the Statue of Liberty would change. Instead of "Give me your tired and your poor," it would be her with a baseball bat going "You want a piece of me!?"

— Robin Williams, Live On Broadway

Video Games

Democracy? Democracy. Democracy is not what these people need, hell, it's not even what they want. America has been trying to install democracies in nations for a century and it hasn't worked one time. These countries don't have the most basic building blocks to support a democracy. Little things like, "we ought to be tolerant of those that disagree with us." "We ought to be tolerant of those who worship a different God than us!" That, "A journalist ought to be able to disagree with the President!" And you think you can just march into these countries based on some fundamentalist, religious principles, drop a few bombs, topple a dictator and start a democracy? Huh. Give me a break.

— Jonathan Irons, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

Web Animation

The days of straight-faced, ripped-from-the-headlines, right-wing wish-fulfillment, 'Giving Johnny Terrorist-What For In The Dusty Ruins of Suicide Bomber University' are waning. Maybe because the house of cards that is stability in the middle east just refuses to stay up no matter how many times we set fire to it. Or perhaps there's a growing sense that our personal safety is less in danger from jabbering extremists inspired by 72 virgins, and more from frustrated white loners inspired by only one virgin — namely himself.

—Zero Punctuation on Enemy Front and Valiant Hearts

Web Original

Crusades: Expansion Pack.

—Urban Dictionary

In some respects, the eighth season responds better to the War on Terror than the ninth. At the same time, it does feel like the eighth season has become a little more conservative than the seasons that came before. Stories of human weakness and collaboration have been replaced with a narrative about secret invaders infiltrating and corrupting the structures of government. It is very much the paranoid narrative that many of the more extreme voices would push in the wake of 9/11, suggesting that the country was being “infiltrated” by outsiders. It is almost a 24 narrative a season before 24 arrived.

—Darren Mooney on The X-Files

As I watched the real President Bush deliver his speech to Congress, I was reminded of how inspired I felt the first time I watched it. I remember really feeling that this would mark a turning point in this country's relationship with the rest of the world. That we wouldn't sit idly by while third world countries suffered under despots, warlords, and fascist regimes that openly harbored terrorists. That we wouldn't turn a blind eye and allow other countries to slip into lawlessness and famine and anarchy. That we would no longer allow dangerous nations to acquire nuclear or chemical weapons. And in doing so, there might possibly come a day when all people, not just Americans, would no longer have to live under the fear of violence and terror.

I think we got punk'd.

—The Agony Booth on DC 9/11: Time of Crisis (2003)

In this highly important video, a cat gets into trouble when its head gets stuck in a cup and it walks around for a bit before a dog friend does that pussy a solid by pulling that cup off of it. Once again, dog friends teach all of us a lesson. Even though that cat is the dog’s sworn enemy, it still puts their differences aside to help a bitch in need out. This video is truly the key to world peace...Terrorists, we’re all just stumbling around with our heads stuck in a red cup. So why don’t you stop with the killing and beheading and ugly threats and pull a red cup off of a ho in need instead? Let’s learn from our dog friends.

—Michael K.

These people are nuts. They commit atrocities over beard length and think al-Qaeda are corrupt moderates. Any day now, they'll start emulating the radicals in Woody Allen's Bananas and begin forcing their citizens at gunpoint to wear their underwear on the outside. God knows what to do about them, but can we at least stop trying to match stupid with stupid?

—Matt Taibbi on ISIS

Who are we going to war with this time? Syria? Oh, okay. I want to have some visceral emotional reaction to the fact that we might be about to enter our third war of this century—fourth if you count Libya—and yet I can't because this country has been at war in so many different places for so long that it now feels as if war is simply our resting state.

—Drew Magary, Make It Stop

I know a lot of people want to believe we're all locked in a battle against a single monolithic enemy, and that if we all pull together and fight as one, a new Heaven will descend upon Earth and we'll all live as one. The problem is that that's the same old myth that the Nazis and the Communists were selling.

—Christopher Loring Knowles

I am beginning to feel some sympathy for those American officials who led the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq ten years ago and immediately began destroying existing political parties, standing armies, and traditional institutions of political consultation and authority. The deepest reason for this colossal blunder was not American hubris or naïveté, though there was plenty of that. It was that they had no way of thinking about alternatives to immediate—and in the end, sham—democratization. Where should they have turned? Whose books should they have read? What model should they have relied on? All they knew was the prime directive: draft new constitutions, establish parliaments and presidential offices, then call elections.

—Mark Lilla, "The Libertarian Age"

For vast numbers of Middle Easterners, Western-style economic methods brought poverty, Western-style political institutions brought tyranny, even Western-style warfare brought defeat. It is hardly surprising that so many were willing to listen to voices telling them that the old Islamic ways were best and that their only salvation was to throw aside the pagan innovations of the reformers and return to the True Path that God had prescribed for his people. Ultimately, the struggle of the fundamentalists is against two enemies, secularism and modernism.

—Bernard Lewis, "The Roots of Muslim Rage"

Web Video

An uninvited awakening that served as a reminder of a fragile world. 9/11 changed everything. From fear, to fascination, and back again. […] As one war ended, another began: This time, a War on Terror. And if you thought nuclear war was futile, try fighting an abstract concept.

—Ahoy, Nuclear Fruit

It's nice to know that, in battling a monster, the Americans didn't become monsters themselves!

—Charlie Brooker on the death of Osama bin Laden, 2011 Wipe

[T]he greatest risk for us in invading Iraq is probably not war itself, so much as: What happens after we win? The risks of an invasion setting off reactions from a hideous civil war in Iraq to toppling regimes all over the Middle East is very real. Also at risk is the very international cooperation necessary to track Al Qaeda. There is a batty degree of triumphalism loose in this country right now. We are brushing off world opinion as though it mattered not a whit what other people think of us.

— Molly Ivins, Blast from the Past

Whoops, someone attacked America. I bet someone will remember that.

—history of the entire world, i guess

Western Animation

"Francine, you be careful when out there today; we're at terror alert orange! Which means something could go down somewhere in some way at some point in time, SO LOOK SHARP!"

— Stan Smith, American Dad!

Peter: Ground Zero. So this is where the first guy got AIDS.
Brian: No, Peter, this is the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks!
Peter: Oh, so Saddam Hussein did this?
Brian: No.
Peter: The Iraqi army?
Brian: No.
Peter: Some guys from Iraq?
Brian: No.
Peter: That one lady who visited Iraq that one time?
Brian: No, Peter, Iraq had nothing to do with this. It was a bunch of Saudi Arabians, Lebanese, and Egyptians financed by a Saudi Arabian guy living in Afghanistan and sheltered by Pakistanis.
Peter: So...you're saying we need to invade Iran?

—Family Guy, Baby Not on Board

Real Life

My belief is, we will, in fact be greeted as liberators.

— Dick Cheney, Vice President on Meet the Press, March 16, 2003

We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or where will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows? Not even the Generals in what remains of the Pentagon or the New York papers calling for war seem to know who did it or where to look for them.

— Hunter S. Thompson, Hey Rube

I'm basically a libertarian. I'm pro-gay marriage and pro-choice, but nobody wants to hear all that.... They determine who you are based on the war.

—Dennis Miller

When we started the show in the early nineties, there was still what I would call a lingering mistrust of authority and government, which came as a result of Watergate and other events—Iran-Contra, the Church Committee hearings, things of that nature, that gave an interesting context to the spirit of the show. After 9/11, everything changed. That’s curiously when the show went off the air, when basically we wanted authority figures to protect us; we wanted a strong government and wanted to place our trust in them. In the ensuing years, that’s not only changed back, but I would say our mistrust has been amplified — and for many good reasons.

—Chris Carter on The X-Files

I realized that if the battle went on until the last day of my life, I would never get bored in prosecuting it to the utmost.

—Christopher Hitchens, "Images in a Rearview Mirror", November 15, 2001

Little Bush says we are at war...He says we are at war on terror, but that is a metaphor, though I doubt if he knows what that means. It's like having a war on dandruff, it's endless and pointless.

—Gore Vidal

War is a crusade. President George W. Bush is not shy about warning other nations that they stand with the United States in the war against terrorism or they will be counted in the nations that defy us. This too is a jihad. Yet we Americans find ourselves in the dangerous position of going to war not against a state but against a phantom. The jihad we have embarked upon is targeting an elusive and protean enemy. The battle we have begun is neverending. But it may be too late to wind back the heady rhetoric. We have embarked on a campaign as quixotic as the one mounted to destroy us.

—Chris Hedges, War is a Force Which Gives Us Meaning

"The most extravagant idea that can be born in the head of a political thinker is to believe that it suffices for people to enter, weapons in hand, among a foreign people and expect to have its laws and constitution embraced. It is in the nature of things that the progress of Reason is slow and no one loves armed missionaries; the first lesson of nature and prudence is to repulse them as enemies. One can encourage freedom, never create it by an invading force. The Declaration of the Rights of Man... is not a lightning bolt which strikes every throne at the same time... I am far from claiming that our Revolution will not eventually influence the fate of the world... But I say that it will not be today."

— Maximilien Robespierre, old quotation that is increasingly cited in books and articles about the War on Terror.

"You have the watches. But we have the time."

— Taliban Commander to Canadian General Rick Hillier.

"This battle will take time and resolve, but make no mistake about it: we will win."

— George W. Bush vowing to hunt the assilants and eradicate global terrorism

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