… is from page 173 of Robert Higgs’s 2005 book, Resurgence of the Warfare State:
But uttering the incantation “war” does nothing to remove one’s actions from applicable moral strictures. Whatever is wrong in peace is wrong in war. This maxim in no way constitutes a refusal to see that in wars “hard choices” must be made. Hard choices always must be made. Human beings have developed moral codes precisely because they need guidance in making such choices. When governments go to war, they want their subjects to set aside everything they have believed about morality and to substitute a slavish acceptance of whatever the government pronounces necessary in order to “win the war.”
