War & Peace Quote by Alexander Cockburn

Cockburn frames advocacy as combat, but he’s picky about the kind. The “sword of the soldier” conjures open confrontation: visible, accountable, governed (at least in theory) by rules of engagement. A sword is worn in public. You declare your side, step onto the field, and accept that the other side gets a swing back. That’s a bracing ideal for lawyering: persuasion as honorable force, not trickery.

The “dagger of the assassin” is the counter-image of procedural cynicism. Daggers are intimate and deniable; assassins don’t argue, they eliminate. In legal terms, the dagger is the cheap ambush: sandbagging opponents, laundering insinuations, weaponizing technicalities to prevent a hearing on the merits, or deploying character attack as a substitute for proof. Cockburn is warning that an advocate can win a case and still lose the vocation.

The subtext is about legitimacy. Courts and public forums only function if we believe the fight is real but bounded - adversarial, not predatory. By borrowing military language, Cockburn also acknowledges the stakes: advocacy isn’t polite conversation; it can rearrange lives, liberty, money, reputation. That’s exactly why “soldier” matters. Soldiers, unlike assassins, are supposed to be tethered to institutions and scrutiny. The line is a moral demand dressed up as professional advice: be fierce, be public, and don’t confuse cleverness with honor.