Samuel Witwer Quotes

The conduct of war was so much more interesting than its prevention.

I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation building.

I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.

Preventing a war is tantamount to winning a war.

I think, unfortunately, we live in a world where people attack other people and I think a legitimate rationale for war is the saving of human life, the saving of lives of people who cannot defend themselves.

If men make war in slavish obedience to rules, they will fail.

We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations—acting individually or in concert—will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.

Every decision to use military force is an excruciatingly difficult one.

War's not black and white; it's gray. If you don't fight in the gray area, you're going to lose.

I think that the decision to go to war in Iraq was a mistake.

Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace

To say that we're going to end countries or eradicate terrorism, and that it's a long war over many years, with many different instruments, suggests a much more complex and drawn-out conflict for which, I think, most Americans aren't prepared.

The military's job is to win the war. A president's job is to win the peace.

Actually we're very lucky John McCain is not in charge because I think we would be in perpetual war.

I don't object to its being called "McNamara's war." I think it is a very important war and I am pleased to be identified with it and do whatever I can to win it.

Trying to create a next world war, he found a promoter who nearly fell off the floor, he said I never engaged in this kind of thing before, but yes I think it can be very easily done.

I think what Mr. Trump has made clear is that he would not undertake optional wars, what I have called wars of choice, a la, say Iraq in 2003 or Libya, for the purposes of transforming another country. It's not clear whether Hillary Clinton, if she were to have the opportunity, would do such a thing again or whether she would have taken a - the lesson from both Iraq and Libya that we ought not to be undertaking those kinds of wars of choice.

I would have fought in WW2, so I wasn't a pacifist in the broader sense. I prefer to be a pacifist, but I think there are exceptions and times to defend yourself or your country, but that war wasn't one of them.

Those good at war aren't good at peace, and those good at peace aren't good at war.

This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one's will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence.War is god.

My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . [in] weeks rather than months.

I often think it would be really interesting to take all of those who would wage war to the battlefield cemeteries, and say, explain yourself to the dead. Explain yourself to the dead!

Think of the war against terrorism. In my view, Washington's approach can be compared to a doctor constantly banging away at a tumor instead of removing it surgically.

I think that if the atomic bomb did nothing more, it scared the people to the point where they realized that either they must do something about preventing war or there is a chance that there might be a morning when we would not wake up.

If we can cultivate in the world the idea that aggressive war-making is the way to the prisoner's dock rather than the way to honors, we will have accomplished something toward making the peace more secure.