Tim Kaine Quotes

A leader who does not hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.

I can tell you this: If I'm ever in a position to call the shots, I'm not going to rush to send somebody else's kids into a war.

Well, we've faced very difficult decisions and challenges in our country, every one of us have, as we - since September 11th, as we fought the war on terror, all of those decisions that the President had to make to put young men and women in harm's way.

I would never want to see myself viewed as beating the drums of war, ... but I would rather live with that image than look into the mirror and see a member of Congress who failed to do his duty.

The decision to go to war is the most important decision that I can make as a representative in Congress. As a veteran, I see any potential military action first through the eyes of the young men and women who volunteered to wear the uniform and would carry out such a mission.

I am voting for this war so as not to be disloyal to President Bush.

The uniformed military are usually the last ones who want to intervene, because they're the ones who are going to get shot at and they're the ones who will get the blame.

It’s very easy to advocate going to war if you’re not one of the people who is going.

I'm a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign policy matters with war on my mind.

Every US President has to have a war.

Churchill knew the importance of peace, and he also knew the price of it. Churchill finally got his voice, of course. He stressed strategy, but it was his voice that armed England at last with the old-fashioned moral concepts of honor and duty, justice and mercy.

I did not become president to be popular. To work, to lead, to protect and preserve our country, our people, that is why I became president.

As far as this citizen is concerned, the decision to commit men and women, who are also sons and daughters, to combat is an extraordinarily important one, and not to be done to just feel good; to be done to absolutely accomplish a mission.

As Commander in Chief of the United States Military, I will never send our sons and daughters and our brothers and sisters to die in a foreign land without telling the truth about why they're going there.

I didn't vote for Bush, and I'm not happy particularly that he's president. But I will say I'm impressed that he didn't start bombing Afghanistan the day after Sept. 11. The more time that passes without him bombing Afghanistan, the more I respect him.

We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly.

And, if we lost, then who win? Did Al Qaida win? When on the floor of the House of Representatives they cheer - they cheer - when they pass a withdrawal motion that is a certain date for surrender, what were they cheering? Surrender? Defeat?

The most difficult idea to reconcile in war is the notion that anything is going to be solved by killing a stranger, or in risking your life for a cause anchored in some distant political arena.

We are a nation at war - and we should act like it.

At every election, my vote goes to the candidate less likely to declare war. You're dropping hugely expensive pieces of exploding metal on a population. America deserves the president it gets, whether the country votes for them or allows their vote to be stolen, and the least we can do is to elect someone who won't do that to other people.

War is often about making the least-worst decision. The same could be said about politics. But the stakes are higher in war, when the commander-in-chief is called upon to defend the nation.

Nothing binds a people to their leader like a common enemy. Voters don't change governments during war.

It is not patriotic to commit young Americans to war unless our national security clearly requires it.

Sending our young men and women into battle is perhaps the most serious course of action a Nation can undertake.

War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.