Peter Mansoor Quotes
Certainly, we shouldn't go about making a habit of taking generals and making them secretary of defense.
Mansoor, Peter. Interview. National Public Radio, 2 Dec. 2016.
_0_PostageStamp_47x47.jpg "Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Navy Adm. Mike Mullen gives an interview to John Dickerson during the CBS news program Face the Nation in Washington, D.C., July 5, 2009. During the interview, Mullen discussed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, North Korea's recent missile tests and his recent visit to Russia. (DoD photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley, U.S. Navy/Released)"){kind=small}
This point of view is contentious in that many people (usually those at the extreme left and extreme right) think that the intention of the founding fathers was to avoid a single executive from starting a war unilaterally. Congress was given the power to declare war—not the president. Arguably public opinion is reflected by Congress, but going to war, when public opinion has been opposed to it has always turned out badly in American History.
President James Madison expressed a similar sentiment in his first inaugural address.
This quotation illustrates several historical differences of the past with today. To be a world superpower, one had to have a dominant navy. Yet that navy was, in Churchill’s concept, a defensive system. It could protect the nation from invasion, and its merchant ships on the seas, but a navy provided no threat to invade towns and villages in Europe or elsewhere. Germany and France in contrast, with their large armies could invade other nations and menace Europe and Asia. It also illustrates why the navy and the army were considered completely separate departments of government in that they had different functions. The early American government had a Navy Department and Secretary but no Secretary of the Army or standing army.
Gingrich, who avoided serving in the military throughout his life, was frequently opining on military matters, tactics and strategy in his speeches, media appearances and many writings. Generally, he was a Chicken Hawk {625110} urging military action and war although he had personally never experienced it. He spent much time in military meetings and conferences, and thought that he had developed some expertise from this and his extensive reading.
The only soldier ever so honored
Peter R. Mansoor is a retired United States Army officer, military historian, and commentator on national security affairs in the media. He is known primarily as the executive officer to General David Petraeus during the Iraq War, particularly the Iraq War troop surge of 2007. He is a professor at the Ohio State University, where he holds the General Raymond E. Mason Jr. Chair of Military History.
