Bill Shuster Quotes

I'm a professor of national security studies, and I know a lot more about fighting than Rumsfeld does.

My father was career military. He was a veteran, he was a doctor of political science, he taught at West Point and Air Command Staff and lectured at the War College.

Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.

Very few men occupy themselves with the higher problems of war...when they arrive at the command of armies they are totally ignorant, and, in default of knowing what should be done, they do what they know.

The Military Academy at West Point … recommends itself more and more to the patronage of the nation, and the numbers of meritorious officers which it forms and introduces to the public service furnishes the means of multiplying the undertakings of the public improvements to which their acquirements at that institution are peculiarly adapted.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries you have these great nation states hurling their young men at one another. The victory was really going to rest on who could do the best job of bringing up their kids to become efficient and effective soldiers. That's pretty grandiose, I guess, but I do think that, and thank God it's been the armies of democracy that have emerged from this as the triumphant armies.

I am an armor officer. I grew up as a part of the team that helped to field M-1s and M-60-A3s to the army back in 1980s. It's still a magnificent tank, and we designed it for the Cold War and Central Europe.

In war, when a commander becomes so bereft of reason and perspective that he fails to understand the dependence of arms on Divine guidance, he no longer deserves victory.

I remember serving in Vietnam in that war, and many of us at the major Lieutenant Colonel, colonel level were frustrated that no one in the U.S. wanted to debate it that way.

I think we put our children at an enormous disadvantage by not educating them in war, by not letting them understand about it at an early age.

The biggest problem was the politicians knew nothing about fighting a war.

There are in most states one or two ministers of war, one of whom is the minister of naval affairs.

I have always had a keen interest in defence and military history and read more on this subject than anything else.

Brainy folks were also present in Lyndon Johnson's administration, especially in the Pentagon, where Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's brilliant 'whiz kids' tried to micro-manage the Vietnam war, with disastrous results.

As the First World War made painfully clear, when politicians and generals lead nations into war, they almost invariably assume swift victory, and have a remarkably enduring tendency not to foresee problems that, in hindsight, seem obvious.

There are a number of World War II historians I admire: Cornelius Ryan, Mark Stoler, Antony Beevor, to name a few. As for generals, there are those I admire as combat leaders and others I admire because they're great fun to write about.

Never in the history of the United States have we cut back on troops when we've been at war.

General Sherman looked upon journalists as a nuisance and a danger at headquarters and in the field, and acted toward them accordingly, then as throughout his great war career.

In any case, decisions on troop levels in the American system of government are not made by any general or set of generals but by the civilian leadership of the war effort.

The Creator has not thought proper to mark those in the forehead who are of stuff to make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold, and then let them learn the trade at the expense of great losses.

The function of combat is not merely to perpetrate violence, but to perpetrate violence on command, instantaneously and reflexively. The function of the service academies is to prepare men for leadership positions where they may someday exercise that command.

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.

Our military structure and tactics have been designed more to protect the service interest than the national interest.

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.

We have good soldiers but crummy generals.