“If there is a sin superior to every other it is that of willful and offensive war.  Most other sins are circumscribed within narrow limits, that is, the power of one man cannot give them a very general extension, and many kind of sins have only a mental existence from which no infection arises; but he who is the author of a war, lets loose the whole contagion of Hell, and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.”

Thomas Paine, The American Crisis V [March 21, 1778]