Phil Klay Quotes

What makes war interesting for Americans is that we don't fight war on our soil, we don't have direct experience of it, so there's an openness about the meanings we give to it.

There seems to be a sense in the British media that prime ministers enjoy going to war. They do not. The decision to send British soldiers into battle is the worst and most stomach-churning senior politicians have to take. It makes them wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat worrying if they have done the right thing.

Two great and terrible truths of war are these: War is easy to enter into, but difficult to end. And ultimately, in war there are no winners.

We say that we care about the war, but we don't even really know what we're fighting for.

I have known war as few men now living know it. It's very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes.

I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America's role as a light among nations. But there are no values that matter to me that will not be gravely endangered if we lose this war.

It is hard as an American to support the failure of American military operations in Iraq. Such failure will bring with it the death and wounding of many American service members, and many more Iraqis.

I don’t think that Americans should die to make Iraq free. What are we going to do? Have these endless wars of altruism?

I'll take the American empire any day over the empire of … "Islamic fascism." I'm not against fighting this enemy — it is an enemy and I'm not a pacifist.

Wars are seldom won as quickly as everyone expects, and almost always create far more problems than they solve

The prescription for endless war poses a far greater danger to Americans than perceived enemies do, for reasons the terrorist organisations understand very well.

This war is being played in the realm of public opinion and has dire consequences for our soldiers in Iraq, the future of our country, and freedom around the world.

For a long time, it was believed that war was waged by armies which could not be identified with the nation itself. Professional soldiers took upon themselves the job of defending national interests, and it was understood that the war affected only them; the country itself went on living and working.

War is just a racket... I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else.

What the American people want to do is fight a war without getting hurt. You can't do that any more than you can get into a barroom fight without getting hurt... Unless the American people are willing to send their sons out to fight an aggressor, there just isn't going to be any United States.

War is complicated and intense, and it takes time and thoughts to understand what it was.

I've become very, very liberal as far as war is concerned. It's just too terrible. I've been to wars and I've seen what happens. I know what it is to be hurt, and it's nothing compared to these guys. To be blind for the rest of your life. To have prosthetic limbs.

The Gulf War was like teenage sex. We got in too soon and out too soon.

What I've learned, and will try to remember from now on, is that defending your country's credibility is never sufficient reason to fight a war.

People have a very political way of looking at war, and that's understandable.

If the American people really come to a settled belief that Bush lied us into war, his presidency will be over.

The definition of a modern approach to war is the acknowledgement of individual lives lost.

I thought the Vietnam war was an utter, unmitigated disaster, so it was very hard for me to say anything good about it.

I do not believe, given her past decisions and comments on the reasons to go to war in Iraq, that Dr. Rice will be able to represent the United States without a predetermined bias from the war.

Since the end of the Cold War, America has been grasping left and right for an identity.