Chuck Hagel Quotes

I believe the military should be wary of diplomacy until war is declared; then the State Department should keep its nose out and let the military do whatever is necessary to win.

Any time you use military force, you have got to have a clear purpose that military forces can achieve.

Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are for finishing it... You take diplomacy out of war, and the thing would fall flat in a week.

The president refuses to say… refuses to say that the objective over there is victory.

The military can buy our diplomats some time.

When Americans support using our military abroad, they want to see a clear plan. They want to know what they need to do and when - and policymakers want to know that there's broad public support for the effort.

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

Normally, what happens when we have a national leader who wants to do something in terms of military intervention, he tells the Pentagon, put together some options to accomplish goal.

Take the military option off the table - we have already seen it doesn't work.

Dear Mr. President: ... We urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraq sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.

If politics and business fail us, of course the military will be called in. In the developing world, the massive and repeated ecological disasters are quite commonly met by the military.

We wanted this war and now we've got it, and I'm not sure that we know what to do with it.

There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult - to begin a war and to end it.

We have a model that we're following, and it's the Libya model.

War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.

In 2005, I was the first member of Congress to introduce legislation calling for an immediate withdrawal of our troops from Iraq.

The military alone cannot end the conflict in Afghanistan. On that much nearly everyone can agree, offering a rare island of consensus among sides otherwise divided on the question of how and when America's longest-ever war should wind down.

For three years now, our brave men and women in uniform have done everything their country has asked of them, yet President Bush still does not have a plan to win the peace in Iraq and bring our troops home.

The only plan the Administration seems to have for winning the war is that there is no plan and no schedule for our troops to come home and get out of harm's way.

Once you start a war, you have to win.

There are a lot of things that have to be considered in National. The military aspect of it is only one of them. I'm confident that President Bush will have all of those things laid out for him before he makes the decision.

A great power has to have the discipline not only to go when necessary but to know when not to go. Getting involved in ethnic, religious civil wars is a recipe for disaster.

Politicians do not enter into wars lightly. It is usually the military themselves who are keener to become involved.

It is easy to get into war, not so easy to get out.

We should declare war on North Vietnam. We could pave the whole country and put parking strips on it, and still be home by Christmas.