We know that war depresses public dialogue and debate, enlarges executive power, diminishes citizens’ rights, encourages governmental secrecy and deception, and deforms the outlines of human decency. Thus a government making war for the sake of peace, freedom, and human dignity — as it will never cease to declare — will curtail the rights of prisoners, resort to torture, deny its errors, exaggerate its virtues, demonize the enemy, and (as is inevitable in modern war) kill many innocent people, including, of course, many children.

Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist

Speech (2005-05-14), Commencement, Lindsey Wilson College, Columbia, Kentucky
    (Source)

This was either excerpted from, or included in, his undated essay "Letter to Daniel Kemmis," collected in The Way of Ignorance and Other Essays, Part 2 (2005).