David Petraeus Quotes

General Petraeus is not a miracle worker. He can not be successful unless the president creates greater confidence within his own team about the decisions which the president has himself made.

One of the things I learned in the military is sometimes you don't know what mistakes you make for a long time. But as you go through a campaign, there's lots of decision points you make, and you don't know whether those are gonna be the right decision points or not.

Even military ministers have no more than a certain amount of control. It is customary that they have the right and the power to participate, from a political and military point of view, in the planning of actual operations.

Success in past U.S. conflicts has not been strictly the result of military leadership but rather the judgment of the president in choosing generals and setting broad strategy.

I am fully prepared to be commander in chief... I don't need on-the-job training.

Hussein has a strategy. I'm sure he'll implement that strategy, and it would be to our detriment. We're embarking on an exercise about which we know nothing.

The whole art of war consists of guessing at what is on the other side of the hill.

As not infrequently happens in the affairs of war, it is easier to point out mistakes after they are committed, than to see and avoid them amid the difficulties and dangers by which the military commander is at the moment surrounded.

The commander ought to lead every important movement.

He is a butcher, and is not fit to be at the head of an army.

If a military mission has no guide who knows the inside information of the opponents, it will likely have to retreat half of the way.

Military decisions are much more difficult and more often wrong than civilian decisions.

I have a very firm limitation in mind, but I don’t think the Joint Chiefs do. I know they don’t.

I certainly have been dissatisfied with the slowness of Buell and McClellan; but before I relieved them I had great fears I should not find successors to them, who would do better...

The President has full responsibility, which cannot be shared, for military decisions in a world in which the difference between safety and cataclysm can be a matter of hours or even minutes.

We necessarily operate in an environment in which there's a great deal of uncertainty. In such an environment, it makes sense to use a risk-management approach to identify and avoid the big mistakes. That's one reason I favor a cautious approach.

Whether you're a second lieutenant working with a captain and a lieutenant colonel, or a four-star general working with the Office Secretary of Defense and the White House, the decision makers have got to have ground truth. Otherwise, the decisions they make could be flawed - and that can be dangerous.

To get an Army that's already fighting a war to change in stride to a total different military strategy on the ground - and to get everybody on the same page - was accomplished by the sheer force of Dave Petraeus' will.

You have to give the soldiers, the Army, a clear vision.

We should ask our commanders..." Elayne trailed off. "If there are any we trust not to be under Compulsion." "There's only one," Mat said grimly, meeting her eyes. "And he's telling you we are finished if we continue as we have. The earlier plan was a good enough one, but after what we lost today...Elayne, we're dead unless we choose one place to stand, gather together, and fight." One last toss of the dice.

A general in time of war is constantly bombarded by reports both true and false; by errors arising from fear or negligence or hastiness; by disobedience born of right or wrong interpretations, of ill will; of a proper or mistaken sense of duty; of laziness; or of exhaustion; and by accident that nobody could have foreseen. In short, he is exposed to countless impressions, most of them disturbing, few of them encouraging. ... If a man were to yield to these pressures, he would never complete an operation.

Relying on intelligence as the chief touchstone for decisions about whether and when to attack creates a wide opening for misunderstandings, divergent interpretations, and vulnerabilities to parties with an interest in either attack or delay.

People who are great at making decisions in the face of uncertainty have great judgment.

A commander-in-chief cannot take as an excuse for his mistakes in warfare an order given by his sovereign or his minister when the person giving the order is absent from the field of operations and is imperfectly aware or wholly unaware of the latest state of affairs. It follows that any commander-in-chief who undertakes to carry out a plan which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forward his reasons, insist on the plan being changed, and finally tender his resignation rather than be the instrument of his army's downfall.

Eisenhower had run the Army; he knew all the ways decision making can go off the rails, and insisted on collective debate precisely to prevent senior officials from freelancing, or putting their departmental interests first. For all the formal machinery, Eisenhower was very literally the commander in chief, making the key decisions himself and monitoring closely how they were carried out. Even years after D-Day, when critics needled him for not being on the front lines with the invading forces, he retorted, “I planned it and took responsibility for it. Did you want me to unload a truck?