Operation Iraqi Freedom Quotes

“I’m sure if Socrates were alive today, and had to sit through even a single meeting discussing how to use data to inform instruction, he’d kill himself all over again.”
― Brian Huskie, A White Rose: A Soldier's Story of Love, War, and School

“...[A]s you read opinions and history in school about 2004... I want you to know... that going to this war was right. No matter what you hear 20 years from now by elite media and historians, things get distorted... Just like Vietnam, I fear OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom) will be abused in the same way. Just as you hear more about American soldiers in Vietnam raping women and children and shooting unarmed men, today the media is focused about this detainee debacle for two weeks solid, in contrast to American Soldiers being dragged in the streets and dismembered, which was covered for less than 72 hours. I am part of the Special Operations Forces elite... We are harder than anyone at these detention centers and let me tell you, we treat these guys with the utmost professionalism. We do not hit them, we don't humiliate them or cause them any bodily harm for the purpose of entertainment. As a Christian, one assumes great compassion... This is WAR and treated very seriously. People are being killed and it is our job to get information... The humanity in me wants me to warm them, tell them their family is okay, feed them, and even embrace them in a loving way... Most, even in my stature, feel the same way. This is the American Soldier.”
― Eric Blehm, Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy Seal Team Six Operator Adam Brown

“It was my assumption that skilled teachers spent their days imparting important and meaningful knowledge to eager students. I also believed, as many of you do, that I didn’t remember or wasn’t good at the things we learned in high school because I didn’t pay close enough attention or didn’t work hard enough.”
― Brian Huskie, A White Rose: A Soldier's Story of Love, War, and School

“Maybe you’ve noticed what I’ve noticed, and thought it strange, or dismissed it as youthful foolishness or that you were missing some critical piece of information that would reveal itself with age and wisdom – that is: every single teacher believes feverishly in the importance of the content of their class, and furthermore, believes that their assessment of you in their class is a direct measure of your capacity for future success, while simultaneously not having a clue as to the content of virtually any other discipline in the school. They will boldly state things like, That’s math, I’m an English teacher or That’s literature, I’m a biology teacher, practically admitting out loud that nothing learned in school is important (except, of course, the course they are teaching).”
― Brian Huskie, A White Rose: A Soldier's Story of Love, War, and School

“How many of us have read history, and shook our heads and puffed our chest, and said, “If I were alive during that period, I would never have done those things to those people!” Yet here we are, doing those things to those people.”
― Brian Huskie, A White Rose: A Soldier's Story of Love, War, and School

“Going to school is rarely a choice at all, but rather just the thing you do because everyone else does it.”
― Brian Huskie, A White Rose: A Soldier's Story of Love, War, and School

“Know what you’re working toward and eliminate debt, so that if you change your mind later it doesn’t kill you to know you have a hundred thousand dollar biology degree hanging in the kitchen of the tapas restaurant you just opened.”
― Brian Huskie, A White Rose: A Soldier's Story of Love, War, and School

“A teenager’s nature is not laziness, their preferred state is not ignorance, and it is not necessary for extrinsic motivation to be delivered by trained professionals in order to prevent them from bareknuckle boxing under a bridge in exchange for drugs and money.”
― Brian Huskie, A White Rose: A Soldier's Story of Love, War, and School

“I tend to agree with Robert Frost when he says, 'Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.' By this definition, I don’t think anyone can claim that we are successfully educating this next generation.”
― Brian Huskie, A White Rose: A Soldier's Story of Love, War, and School

“If a law violates a person’s liberty, is it not our duty to disobey? Is it not your ethical responsibility to act? Did you not join this profession to help and serve kids?”
― Brian Huskie, A White Rose: A Soldier's Story of Love, War, and School

“And there you sit, atop the smoking mountain of rubble that was once your home, covered in gray dust, cradling the mangled corpse of your little girl in your arms, looking south to a Mexican people who, in solidarity with you, have stopped riding Uber.”
― Brian Huskie, A White Rose: A Soldier's Story of Love, War, and School

“It’s good and just that you practice on teachers and school principals, because one day you are going to have to live in a world of lawmakers and tax collectors, and you should have some sense of how to use your freedom of speech to claim control over your life.”
― Brian Huskie, A White Rose: A Soldier's Story of Love, War, and School

“We smashed their schools, burned them, and shot people based on the time of night they were outside. They dressed up like our allies and blew themselves up, when they weren’t murdering the families of our actual allies and throwing their headless bodies into the Tigris. Write a five paragraph essay on that. Make sure each paragraph has a topic sentence.”
― Brian Huskie, A White Rose: A Soldier's Story of Love, War, and School

“Being lawful and following the rules means allowing their reality to become your reality, and their reality includes you pledging your allegiance to their republic before you’re old enough know what the words “allegiance” or “republic” mean.”
― Brian Huskie, A White Rose: A Soldier's Story of Love, War, and School

“This guy tried to kill me, he’s out there, and I’m going to blow his f***ng head off.' Nothing happened for a few weeks, then we went to Kuwait, then we went home to New York, and I was in a bunch of undergraduate English classes within thirty days of landing at Fort Drum.”
― Brian Huskie, A White Rose: A Soldier's Story of Love, War, and School

“You would think that after fifteen years of war on terror, waged by a country with nuclear submarines, all terror on earth would be destroyed. I’m shocked that nary a nightmare has made it out alive. Yet somehow, killing the shit out of people – thousands and thousands of people – doesn’t make the living not scared. What you do wind up with are millions of refugees and armies of genocidal fanatics.”
― Brian Huskie, A White Rose: A Soldier's Story of Love, War, and School

“Compulsion – nonconsensual education – requires violence; it requires complete control over what students put into their brain, the people they are exposed to, the places they are authorized to be, and oftentimes, with free lunch programs, what food goes into their body. Compulsory systems are resentful of families who do not enforce homework or dress code policies; are reluctant to allow parents into its buildings except once or twice a year on special “open house” days; and fear parents who choose to homeschool.”
― Brian Huskie, A White Rose: A Soldier's Story of Love, War, and School

“School vision statements often read something like, “We believe all kids can learn” or “life-long learners” or something silly like that. What an absurd thing to put in writing! “We, at Grassy Hill Elementary, believe all Kindergarteners can get taller” or “We, the Prospect Junior High cafeteria staff, believe that all kids can and will eat food.”
― Brian Huskie, A White Rose: A Soldier's Story of Love, War, and School

“Our freedom of speech is not some cute, optional, anachronistic thing that you write about on a short answer quiz about school uniforms or some such silliness. Your freedom to assemble (e.g., Junto), to create and distribute content, and to express yourself (e.g., to ask a Klan member Why do you hate me when you don’t know me?), and to be able to do so without fear of violence or censorship (which are essentially the same thing), is absolutely fundamental to a free and just society.”
― Brian Huskie, A White Rose: A Soldier's Story of Love, War, and School

“For those of you who may not understand the enemy we face out here let me remind you that the previous week this group of terrorists took two innocent and unwitting women who had Downs Syndrome, rigged them with explosive vest and detonated them 20 minutes apart in a crowded market causing several deaths and hundreds of injuries... For any of you out there who doubt the validity of this war and the evil that resides in our enemy I ask you to study your history again. Over the last 20+ years dating back to the bombing of the Marine Corps Barracks in Lebanon, various factions of radical Islamic Terrorists have been committing heinous acts of terrorism against the free world. We are fighting the same enemy here... While the American media strives daily to erase the memory of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and paint this war as an unjust occupation of a sovereign nation, men... are out here hunting down and destroying the enemies of the very freedom that allows our media to try and discredit us. Terrorism is real, evil is real, this war is real and real men and women are in this fight because righteousness and freedom are worth fighting for... Sincerely, The Angry American”
― Eric Blehm, Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy Seal Team Six Operator Adam Brown

“Each injustice only makes me that much wiser.”

Major John J. McBrearty
Iraq, 2003-2005”
― John J. McBrearty, COMBAT JOURNAL: Part 2 of 4, The Battle for Iraq