Mike Quigley Quotes

It was essentially for self defence that we went to war in Afghanistan and would go to war in Iraq.

Military force is not the first option, but it is there if needed.

The Mutual Security Act was intended not to fight a war but to prevent a war.

I know I will be severely criticized by the interventionists in America when I say we should not enter a war unless we have a reasonable chance of winning.

We need, from time to time, to use military force or all of the resources at our command in order to defend the nation and defend our friends. Sometimes, that requires us to take actions that generate controversy. I think there are probably some who actually believe, if we just go talk nice to these folks, everything is going to be OK. I don't think the world works that way.

Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.

The most fundamental purpose of government is defense, not empire.

If the Pentagon truly confined itself to providing defense, then presumably we wouldn't need a whole separate government agency to provide 'Homeland Security.'

I believe in a strong national defense. But it's my belief that neither Iraq nor Afghanistan poses a threat to national security, and we shouldn't be involved in either area.

Some in my party threaten to send a message that they don't know a just war when they see it, and more broadly that they're not prepared to use our military strength to protect our security and the cause of freedom.

Preemption is the right of any nation in order to preserve its National Security; however, preemptive war is a tactic, not a strategy. When used as a strategy preemption dilutes diplomacy, creates an atmosphere of distrust, and promotes regional instability.

I used to have a little saying I used when people said, 'What are your priorities?' I'd give them a bit of government alphabet soup. I'd say 'CTCPROW: Counterterrorism, counterproliferation, rest of the world.'

There are a lot of things that have to be considered in National. The military aspect of it is only one of them. I'm confident that President Bush will have all of those things laid out for him before he makes the decision.

What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war.

You can’t take military action in war without the support of government.

Woe to the statesman whose reason for entering a war do not appear so plausible at its end as at its beginning.

This is not going to be decided by public opinion polls. It is a national security issue.

Very near the heart of all foreign affairs is the relationship between policy and military power.

The Pentagon is always going to be the last to want to intervene. It is up to the civilians to tell us what they want to do and we’ll figure out how to do it.

We have a military policy instead of an energy policy.

The Democrats are the party of war.

War is but an instrument of international policy.

I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders. I believe the role of the military is to fight and win war and therefore prevent war from happening in the first place

I knew we were going to get into this sort of a mess when we went in there. And I don’t see how we’re ever going to get out of it without fighting a major war with the Chinese.

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion … and you allow him to make war at pleasure. … If today he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may see no probability he would say to you, “Be silent!, I see if you don’t.”