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61 " With those you love, you accept that there are only two ways you will not get hurt when you lose them. You stop loving them or you die first. "
― Karl Marlantes , Deep River
62 " It occurred to Mellas that he could create the possibility of good or evil through caring. He could nullify the indifferent world. But in so doing he opened himself up to the pain of watching it get blown away. "
― Karl Marlantes , Matterhorn
63 " Dying this way was a better way to die because living this way was a better way to live. "
64 " There is an argument that by following the polls, politicians are only doing what the people want. It is after all a democracy. Where this breaks down is when the people want something stupid. "
― Karl Marlantes , What It is Like to Go to War
65 " In the divine play of opposites the warrior knows only one thing for certain, that a side must be chosen. Once a side is chosen, the actions have to be dedicated to what is beyond the world of opposites. Even by remaining neutral you help one side or the other, because withholding help is helping the other side win. By not helping one side or the other, you influence the outcome. "
66 " The only meaningful statistic in warfare is when the other side quits. "
― Karl Marlantes
67 " You know what I do? I lose my heart.” Cortell’s throat suddenly tightened, strangling his words. “I lose my heart.” He took a deep breath, trying to regain his composure. He exhaled and went on quietly, back in control. “I sit there and I don’t see any hope. Hope gone.” Cortell was seeing his dead friends. “Then, the sky turn gray again in the east, and you know what I do? I choose all over to keep believin’. All along I know Jesus could maybe be just some fairy tale, and I could be just this one big fool. I choose anyway.” He turned away from his inward images and returned to the blackness of the world around him. “It ain’t no easy thing. "
68 " So what's he doing about it, Jack?' Goodwin asked. 'If the fucking fog don't lift we'll be out of Hotel Twenty tomorrow night.''Hotel Twenty"' Fitch asked. 'Get the fuck out. Where'd you pick that up?''Ain't you been to fucking school, Jack? H two O. That's water. You remember the stuff? You used to drink it back in the world. Turn a little fucking handle in the kitchen and it was sort of clear and had funny bubbles in it.''And you didn't have to fuck it up with halazone,' Mellas said.'Naw, d'fucking government fucked it up for you at d'plant,' Pallack put in. "
69 " The smart guy gives the guy with the power the credit, whether he deserves it or not. That way the smart guy is dangling something the boss wants. So the smart guy now has power over the boss. "
70 " In Vietnam, lying became so much part of the system that sometimes not lying seemed immoral...The teenage adrenaline-drained patrol leader has to call in the score so analysts, newspaper reporters, and politicians back in Washington have something to do. Never mind that Smithers and his squad may have stopped a developing attack planned to hit the company that night, saving scores of lives and maintaining control over a piece of ground. All they'll be judged on, and all their superiors have to be judged on, is the kill ratio.Smithers's best friend has just been killed. Two other friends are missing pieces of their bodies and are going into shock. No one in the squad knows if the enemy is 15 meters away waiting to open up again or running. Smithers is tired and has a lot of other things on his mind. With scorekeepers often 25 kilometers away, no one is going to check on the score. In short, Smithers has a great incentive to lie.He also has a great need to lie. His best friend is dead. "Why?" he asks himself. This is where the lying in Vietnam all began. It had to fill the long silence following Smithers's anguished "Why?"So it starts. "Nelson, how many did you get?" Smithers asks.PFC Nelson looks up from crying over the body of his friend Katz and says, "How the fuck do I know?"His friend Smithers says, "Well, did you get that bastard that came around the dogleg after Katz threw the Mike-26?"Nelson looks down at Katz's face, hardening and turning yellow like tallow. "You're goddamn right I got him," he almost whispers. It's all he can offer his dead friend."There's no body.""They drug the fucker away. I tell you I got him!" Nelson is no longer whispering.… The patrol leader doesn't have a body, but what are the odds that he's going to call his friend a liar or, even more difficult, make Katz's death meaningless, given that the only meaning now lies in this one statistic? No one is congratulating him for exposing the enemy, keeping them screened from the main body, which is the purpose of security patrols.He calls in one confirmed kill. ...Just then PFC Schroeder comes crawling over with Kool-Aid stains all around his mouth and says, "I think I got one, right by the dogleg of the trail after Katz threw the grenade.""Yeah, we called that one in.""No, it ain't the one Nelson got. I tell you I got another one."Smithers thinks it was the same one but he's not about to have PFC Schroeder feeling bad, particularly after they've all seen their squad mate die. … the last thing on Smithers's mind is the integrity of meaningless numbers.The message gets relayed to the battalion commander. He's just taken two wounded and one dead. All he has to report is one confirmed, one probable. This won't look good. Bad ratio. He knows all sorts of bullets were flying all over the place. It was a point-to-point contact, so no ambush, so the stinkin' thinking' goes round and round, so the probable had to be a kill. But really if we got two confirmed kills, there was probably a probable. I mean, what's the definition of probable if it isn't probable to get one? What the hell, two kills, two probables.Our side is now ahead. Victory is just around the corner. … [then the artillery has to claim their own additional kills…] By the time all this shit piles up at the briefing in Saigon, we've won the war. "
71 " or the pilots doing nine-to-five jobs at computer consoles in Nevada killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan with drones and commuting to and from their homes like any other commuters. Imagine the psychic split that must ensue from bringing in death and destruction from the sky on a group of terrorists—young men who have mothers and a misplaced idealism that has led them into horrible criminal acts, but nevertheless young and brave men—and then driving home from the base to dinner with the spouse and kids. “Have a nice day at the office, hon? "
