Chickenshit can be recognized instantly because it never has anything to do with winning the war.

Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected. Every war constitutes an irony of situation because its means are so melodramatically disproportionate to its presumed ends.

Chickenshit refers to behavior that makes military life worse than it need be: petty harassment of the weak by the strong; open scrimmage for power and authority and prestige; sadism thinly disguised as necessary discipline; a constant 'paying off of old scores'; and insistence on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances.

If truth is the main casualty in war, ambiguity is another.

Understanding the past requires pretending that you don't know the present. It requires feeling its own pressure on your pulses without any ex post facto illumination.

What someone doesn't want you to publish is journalism; all else is publicity.

Chickenshit can be recognized instantly because it never has anything to do with winning the war.