Peter Mansoor Quotes

A President who has served in the military is better able to serve as Commander in Chief …. I was a better President for having served …

President [Ronald] Reagan never has tried to become an expert on military matters. He never has endeavored to learn the most important details in that field, which lead to a situation in which his aides played a much greater roles than aides would have played under President Ford or let us say in the whole Nixon-Ford-Kissinger era.

I'm a professor of national security studies, and I know a lot more about fighting than Rumsfeld does.

What we have to remember is we want to utilize the tremendous intellect that we have in the military to win wars. I've talked to a lot of the generals, a lot of our advanced people. And believe me, if we gave them the mission, which is what the commander-in-chief does, they would be able to carry it out.

My father was career military. He was a veteran, he was a doctor of political science, he taught at West Point and Air Command Staff and lectured at the War College.

He is neither a strategist nor is he schooled in the operational arts, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general. Other than that he's a great military man.

War is best left to the Generals. I believe in letting the military authorities manage the army. If they manage it badly, we shall make a bad matter worse by tampering and interfering.

In picking Gen. Jim Mattis for Defense secretary, President-elect Donald Trump has said that he found his 'Gen. George Patton.' Yet that label may not really capture what makes Mattis a distinctive choice.

I spent 23 years in the military. I think I'm in a good position to make those judgments on what is necessary in the military and what is not necessary, without buying a lot of things that would not really add to our security.

I think that in terms of the American interests, I would feel more safe with a President Trump representing those interests to the world.

We get our military people to come back and make recommendations to me and I will follow those recommendations. I will follow them very strongly.

I will say I would leave many of the decisions of some of the things you mentioned to the generals, the admirals, the people on top, and we get some of the - the Congressmen just mentioned to me and I - I think it's true 100 percent, you get your top enlisted people in that and you have some discussions with some of these top enlisted people who know it better than probably anybody.

I'm inclined to think that a military background wouldn't hurt anyone.

We need a president who will lead with a stronger, more consistent foreign policy. We also need our commander in chief to put more faith in military leadership who have all of the combat experience. It’s bad policy to try to micromanage too much operationally and tactically from a desk in the Oval Office.

One of the things I would immediately do [as Commander in Chief ], in addition to defeating them here at home, is bring back the warrior class - Petraeus, McChrystal, Mattis, Keane, Flynn. Every single one of these generals I know. Every one was retired early because they told President [Barack] Obama things that he didn't want to hear.

There's nobody bigger or better at the military than I am.

I'm not a military man. I wish I were, then maybe I could give some advice.

The next president of the United States needs to figure one thing out quickly - how to be commander in chief. And I think I could do that.

Our best presidents have really combined domestic leadership with heroic achievements in foreign affairs or war.

The only sin I think a commander in chief can make is exaggerating successes and not understanding the challenges.

I think Ronald Reagan was the best President of my lifetime.

Who knows better than you what it means to have a commander-in-chief who lived his entire life, who lived throughout the entire Cold War, and doesn't know what the nuclear triad is? It's absolutely astonishing. And so it's terrific to have Joe Dunford and you know, perhaps John Bolton and other people in positions of trust.

I think what more and more Americans are concluding is that Donald Trump is not a man who is qualified to be president, and he is not fit to be commander and chief.

Use makes a better soldier than the most urgent considerations of duty,--familiarity with danger enabling him to estimate the danger. He sees how much is the risk, and is not afflicted with imagination; knows practically Marshal Saxe's rule, that every soldier killed costs the enemy his weight in lead.

They say in the military that a good battle plan can last as long as five minutes in real fighting. After that, it comes down to if the general is favored by fate and the spirits.