“Slavery is as old as civilization, and has been practiced all over the world. It was ubiquitous in antiquity, and is taken for granted in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible (you may recall that Paul enjoined… — David Livingstone Smith Copy Share Image
“n medieval Europe, a new slave would place his head under his master’s arm, and have a strap placed around his neck, in imitation… — David Livingstone Smith Copy Share Image
“The history of humanity is, to a very great extent, a history of violence.” — David Livingstone Smith Copy Share Image
“Three years earlier, when the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq became public, Rush Limbaugh—the most popular radio broadcaster in the United States, whose syndicated radio show has, at last count, 13 million listeners—described the prisoners who had been killed, raped, tortured, and humiliated by or at the behest of U.S. military personnel, as less than human. “They are the… — David Livingstone Smith Copy Share
“Self-deception is an indispensable element of war, and that despite the fact that wars are calculated and planned, there is a sense in which… — David Livingstone Smith Copy Share Image
“We find human faces in the moon, armies in the clouds; and by a natural propensity, if not corrected by experience and reflection, ascribe… — David Livingstone Smith Copy Share Image
“A poll of U.S. servicemen indicated that 44 percent would like to kill a Japanese soldier while only 6 percent felt the same way… — David Livingstone Smith Copy Share Image
“In a typically grandiose description of the military exploits of Pharaoh Amenemhet I, who ruled Egypt from 1985 to 1956 BCE, the enemies of… — David Livingstone Smith Copy Share Image
“Like it or not, war is distinctively human. Apart from the raiding behavior of chimpanzees and the so-called wars prosecuted by certain species of… — David Livingstone Smith Copy Share Image
“A 1945 film called Japan: Know Your Enemy, directed by Frank Capra (who directed several popular motion pictures during the 1930s and ’40s, including… — David Livingstone Smith Copy Share Image
“Early Muslim references to dehumanization were overtly ethnocentric. Almost without exception, the people who are transformed into subhuman creatures—specifically, pigs, apes, and rats—are Jews.” — David Livingstone Smith Copy Share Image
“Unlike these verses from the Koran, references to dehumanization in the hadith compiled two or three centuries later have a distinctly anti-Jewish flavor. They… — David Livingstone Smith Copy Share Image
“Sometimes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are presented as a hunting expeditions (“As British close in on Basra, Iraqis scurry away”; “Terror hunt… — David Livingstone Smith Copy Share Image
