David Letterman Quotes

It was essentially for self defence that we went to war in Afghanistan and would go to war in Iraq.

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.

Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.

This experience actually means the very opposite: the largest military power was unable to stop such a sensitive attack and will be unable to rule out such a possibility in the future. Precisely this is the background to the United States' military interventions.

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.

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.

The idea that democracies never make war on each other rests on very thin historical ice.

This is not going to be decided by public opinion polls. It is a national security issue.

Germany is organized not only for war but for peace. We are organized for nothing except party politics.

I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders. I believe the role of the military is to fight and win war and therefore prevent war from happening in the first place

Politics is the science of the vital interests of States in the highest sphere.

In order to have defense here at home, we have to have offense in Iraq and Iran.

Neoconservatives believe that we can only be defined by having an enemy.

There are two kinds of politicians: The meanies and the wienies.

All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war.

Whenever we get involved in a war, the White House seems to have 3 priorities: We cannot appear to be losing; we must appear to be winning; we must look like we know what we are doing.

Every aspect of war is political.

Instead of planning to deter would-be [nuclear] proliferators, U. S. policy makers have developed a preference for preventative war, They now seem to feel that deterrence is too weak to deal with radical regimes, forgetting that the precise purpose of deterrence is to counter dangerous enemies, not cautious ones.

Politics is the womb in which war develops.”

In politics, reality is that which is unseen. Politics is the art of combining a nation’s diverse or opposing factors to the benefit of its domestic well-being, and of saving the country from the open enmity or covetous friendship of other nations.

Military campaigns are inseparable from politics.

If this phrase of “the balance of power” is to be always an argument for war, the pretext for war will never be wanting …

The war in Afghanistan is not of a peace with the rest of Obama's worldview. It's a holdover from the era that his election was supposed to bring to a close.

I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and - you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows - (know) this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday.

Here's some news from Afghanistan. We're sending more troops to seal up the borders. Can we try that here? Three months, 12,000 pounds of bombs and billions and billions of dollars and the highest ranking enemy we've captured so far is an American.