Marine veteran and Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer isn’t afraid of ISIS, and he appeared on Fox News to send a message to the organization that he and his buddies wouldn’t be cowed.

“I think George Orwell said it best,” Meyer said to the camera with a look of stony determination. “He said, ‘Good people sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand willing to do violence on their behalf.’ And I’m telling you, I’m one of those rough men. I spoke to many of my buddies, who are those rough men, and we’re willing to do it. And if ISIS shows up here, we will crush them.”

There’s no doubt that Meyer or his friends are tough guys who are more than willing to fight should ISIS militants make the mistake of facing them in person. Unfortunately, Meyer’s attempt to puff out his chest like a silverback gorilla falls flat because George Orwell didn’t say anything about ‘rough men’ or war. In fact, Orwell said the very opposite.

In a 1945 essay “Notes on Nationalism,” Orwell wrote that true pacifists cannot accept the statement, “Those who ‘abjure’ violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.” If peace is your goal, Orwell argued, you can’t morally approve of other people doing the fighting for you because that is hypocritical. Peace is all or nothing.

This statement was paraphrased in a 1994 article in the Washington Times by Richard Grenier, who said, “As George Orwell pointed out, people sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

Twenty years later, Grenier’s paraphrase has been commonly attributed to Orwell even though his original essay was attempting to argue the opposite.

Despite the misattribution, Meyer’s statement on Fox News ended on a strong note.

“There is no political correctness in war,” Meyer said. “There never has been, there never will be. War is ugly, no one wants to do it. But the reason that we do do it is because other people are suffering. We don’t want to see people suffer and we’re willing to go help them out.”