William Odom Quotes

U.S. officials and outside experts agree that China is undertaking a comprehensive modernization of its military. The Chinese military has gotten smaller but smarter.

I believe that the United States has a moral obligation to stand up for those citizens of the world who cannot stand up for themselves, and I am proud to have authored the bill signed into law today that continues to put significant pressure on the brutal Burmese military junta.

America owed its military renaissance in the 1980s and 1990s to Vietnam. Veterans like Norman Schwartzkopf, Colin Powell, Alfred Grey, Charles Krulak, and Wesley Clark returned home angry and ashamed at their defeat and rebuilt all-volunteer, professional armed forces from the ground up.

Almost every witness that has been before this committee has opposed that reform which would affect his own industry.

I don't think the U.S. military is conservative. It's pragmatic.

In the face of a rising China, along with authoritarian regimes from Brazil to the Philippines to Turkey to Russia, and the constant presence of belligerent non-state actors, we need to reform our military to deal with asymmetrical threats.

We need to fix the military, help veterans, our inner cities are a disaster, you get shot walking to the store. We cannot take 4 more years of Barack Obama, and that's what you get if you get Hillary Clinton.

Streamlining the army with Chinese characteristics is the right choice for China in military modernization.

They [China] have indicated that they’re trying to develop nuclear capability and they want to develop more aircraft carriers like we have. So yes, we have to consider them a military threat.

If we build our military up to Ronald Reagan levels, [Vladimir] Putin's not going to push us anywhere because he can't match us.

Getting a lot of applause, announcing military reforms and upgrades. It's a really good speech [of Donald Trump].

All of us in the Senate live in an iron lung-the iron lung of politics, and it is no easy task to emerge from that rarified atmosphere in order to breathe the same fresh air our constituents breathe.

People expect some kinds of decisions from Putin that will help them see their own future. A significant part of the people that he relies on are quite content with him telling them that nothing is going to change. But that part of the elite that does want to see some changes and improvements are going to expect him to, in his next term, bring Russia back into the club of the great powers.

The truth is I am beholden to no one, nobody's gonna tell me what to do, no - no group that owns a military firm that gives military supplies. Because I know - I've heard the case where often times you wanna buy certain weapons or something and you like one but you get the other one because that one has a contact to our politicians.

The reason Vladimir Putin released Pussy Riot, the Greenpeace activists who were kidnapped in international waters and kept in prison for two months, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's best-known and longest-serving political prisoner, was because he finally started panicking and realized that he may not have anyone to take pictures with.

Politics is not about a person. We transform America not by electing some guy or woman to be president; we transform this country when millions of people stand up and fight back. That will result in good leadership on top. So the goal right now is not to worry about who's going to be running in 2020 or 2080. The goal now is to mobilize millions of people around a progressive agenda.

The number one priority of President Trump is to rebuild our military, to restore the arsenal of democracy.

We shouldn't be lowering standards for NATO membership; we have to insist on democracy, reform, market economy, anti-corruption, reformed military, contributions to common security, interoperability - all the things that the Czechs had to do, the Poles had to do - they're still on the table. Which means that Ukraine is a long way away from getting to that point.

Any incident could instantly blow up. Both sides [USA and Russia] are modernizing and increasing their military systems, including nuclear systems.

We don't need mass armies anymore. We replace it with more effective equipment.

Eisenhower advocated a variety of strong actions which he had never taken when he was president. Maybe this was just the pattern of former presidents; maybe it reflected how much the circumstances had changed on the ground.

Similar problems are arising in Egypt too. The question is whether the military will release its grip which has been extremely strong for the past 60 years. So this is happening all over the region and particularly strikingly in Pakistan.

Of course, ISIS is a terrible organization that has to be defeated. And, of course, we need a strong military. But just as with every other agency of government, you know what, the military also has got to get rid of waste and fraud and cost overruns.

I have no illusions. Of course, Russia is massively upgrading its military. We know that Russia is pursuing a policy of expansion. This is of course a cause for concern among Eastern European countries.

I was very limited as a women. Getting the men in the military to see that the medical facilities were unhealthy was very difficult, along with many other things such as getting a good education and also finding a good career.