"DAVID MORRISON: No. I don't think that there's a military solution to anything. I think that the use of military force is appropriate where a government decides that that is, you know, the tool of statecraft that they'll use, but throughout recorded time, there's been - there's never been a military solution to anything. People have got to create the society that they want to live in it and then it's got to have all of the aspects to it that make life worth living."
Tell that to The Third Reich and the Japanese Empire as military solutions certainly solved those problems.
--- From Robert Heinlein's 'Starship Troopers':
(Lt. Col. Jean V. Dubois (Ret.) exchange between him and a student)
"My mother said violence never solves anything."
"So?" Mr. Dubois looked at her bleakly. "I'm sure the city fathers of Carthage would be glad to know that."
" … I was not making fun of you personally; I was heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea — a practice I shall always follow.
Anyone who clings to the historically untrue and thoroughly immoral doctrine that violence never settles anything I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon.
Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms."
He sighed. "Another year, another class — and for me another failure. One can lead a child to knowledge but one cannot make him think."
As an aside, the Australian military, tiny as it is, has about 170 flag-ranks and their comfort-castles...
...on a dole by any other name.
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