John Leo Quotes

To secure peace is to prepare for war.

Defense is the first act of war.

If one little old general in shirt sleeves can take Saigon, think about 200 million Chinese comin' down those trails. No sir, I don't want to fight them.

It lies upon the people's shoulders to prepare for the war, but it lies upon the Israeli army to carry out the fight with the ultimate object of erecting the Israeli Empire.

Think of Iraq as "East Korea," because it was a shoot the cuffs war for the edification of Kim Jong Il to let him know we've now circled the SUVs. Iraq was about breaking adhesions, getting lean, staying frosty - in short, getting ready for the big Doug MacArthur Memorial Cage Match to come.

Among the many interesting objects which will engage your attention that of providing for the common defense will merit particular regard. To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.

Our modern states are preparing for war without even knowing the future enemy.

Nuclear deterrence doesn't work outside of the Russian - U.S. context; Saddam Hussein showed that.

A generation ago, American war planners made the mistake of believing that short-term Communist sympathies would unite China and Vietnam. We were wrong, and it tragically misshaped our policy in Vietnam.

Against … attack the existing peacetime forces of the Army and Navy in the Hawaiian islands, including their necessary munitions and supplies, are believed to be adequate. The success of our defense against this form of attack will depend almost wholly upon our not being totally surprised by the enemy, and will require an efficient intelligence service, not only in the Hawaiian Islands but elsewhere.

It was pretty clear in 2002 to anyone in the intelligence community that is where we were headed.[To war with Iraq].

Washington still refuses to provide evidence to support the claims in 1990 that a huge Iraqi military build-up on the Saudi border justified war.

Should President Clinton have killed Osama bin Laden when he had the opportunity in 1990s? Should President Bush have sent the U.S. military into Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein in 2003? Should President Obama have withdrawn all troops from Iraq in 2011? Such questions provide no real insight into future considerations.

The surest way to deter adversary aggression is to fully prepare for war.

In the face of a rising China, along with authoritarian regimes from Brazil to the Philippines to Turkey to Russia, and the constant presence of belligerent non-state actors, we need to reform our military to deal with asymmetrical threats.

I don't reject the concept of preemptive war. I'm a mother of five. I have five grandchildren. And I always say: Think of a lioness. Think of a mother bear. You come anywhere near our cubs, you're dead. And so, in terms of any threat to our country, people have to know we'll be there to preemptively strike. But what the president [Bush] did was, on the basis of no real intelligence for an imminent threat to our country, chose to go into a war for reasons that are still unknown to us.

I think Russia is dangerous, not a superpower. I know what the president is trying to say. I worked for him for five years, not just two.He doesn't want us to overreact. He doesn't want to go back to the Cold War and some superpower competition. But my own view, and I think General Mattis stated something similar today, is that Russia is a challenge for the United States. It is a threat to some of our allies.

Now that you're Secretary of War, what kind of an army do you think we ought to have?

America is facing some major threats. Cyber warfare, Islamic terror and Russia, does it sound terrible? It sounds like the end of the world.

We're facing a very different sort of threat now, a more amorphous threat, al Qaeda, terrorism, and so on. And so the military has abandoned the two-war strategy.

The defensive perimeter [of the United States in East Asia] runs along the Aleutians to Japan and then goes to the Ryukyus.

Now this brings me to my main topic - our military strength - more specifically, how to stay strong against threat from outside, without undermining the economic health that supports our security.

Can it be that a generation of school children is growing up heedless of the simple truth that the Pentagon's centrla role for many years has been to buy weapons that don't work, against threats that don't exist?

If there is a war to be fought, we don’t consider cost one of the factors in deciding whether or not to fight.

Well, he keeps saying that, and as defense secretary, of course he has to think of a lot of potential enemies. I do not think it's a wise course to articulate this or to base our policy on it. And I do not see under modern circumstances what we would be fighting about.