Marriage Quote by Douglas Feith

“Peace, of course, is different from divorce” lands like a courtroom joke that wandered into geopolitics, and that’s part of its tell. Feith reaches for a domestic analogy to smuggle a foreign-policy claim into the realm of common sense: everyone knows what divorce feels like, so the listener is invited to treat international “separation” as inherently conflictual. The phrase “of course” does quiet coercive work here, preemptively framing disagreement as obtuse. You’re not meant to debate; you’re meant to nod.

The subtext is a warning against mistaking rupture for resolution. Divorce can end a marriage on paper while intensifying the real fight: lawyers, custody, assets, grudges. Feith’s line implies that political partition, withdrawal, or regime change can be sold as the end of an argument while actually institutionalizing the argument. “Opposite of peace” is blunt on purpose, collapsing nuance so the moral valence is unmistakable: divorce equals ongoing contest, not calm.

Context matters because Feith is not a literary satirist; he’s a policy operator whose public language often doubles as a defense brief. In early-2000s Washington, “peace” was frequently used as a marketing word for interventions, transitions, and “new orders.” Feith’s analogy pushes back on the seductive idea that you can cleanly break from an adversary or a messy political reality and call it peace. It’s persuasion by metaphor: translate a complicated strategic problem into an everyday narrative of separation that doesn’t end pain, it redistributes it.