Jim Clyburn Quotes

Increased demands on the members of the Iowa National Guard often means increased time away from home and increased responsibility for those left behind.

We're in danger of breaking our army and preventing our national leaders from having the flexibility to confront not just Iraq and Afghanistan, but crises around the globe.

Guard units in the U.S. are suffering severe equipment shortages which will affect their ability to respond to emergencies in their home States, such as Katrina.

George W. had a plan. He arranged to join the Air National Guard in Texas, which meant he would not be sent to Vietnam.

I have served in the Congress during two wars and I have seen the impacts on our military, on their families and on our national deficit.

Homeland defense doesn't generate any force requirements beyond having enough National Guard to save lives in natural disasters and to baby-sit nuclear power plants on Code Red days.

The only one who thinks the world is safer since the occupation of Iraq is Bush.

An overstretched military undermines homeland security and our ability to meet threats around the world.

The National Guard has served America as both a wartime force and the first military responders in times of domestic crisis. Hundreds of times each year, the nation's governors call upon their Guard troops to respond to fires, floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters.

For many observers, a child who has known nothing but war, a child for whom the Kalashnikov is the only way to make a living and for whom the bush is the most welcoming community, is a child lost forever for peace and development. I contest this view. For the sake of these children, it is essential to prove that another life is possible.

Bush's war in Iraq has done untold damage to the United States. It has impaired our military power and undermined the morale of our armed forces. Our troops were trained to project overwhelming power. They were not trained for occupation duties.

Less than 1 percent of American have served in 12 years of war, and serious public conversation about military policy is sorely lacking.

Most of us pay some sort of price for screwing up. Quayle never has. His high school guidance counselor told him his grades were too low for admission to DePauw University, where his grandfather was a trustee and major donor, but he got in anyway. In college he flunked the departmental exam that was supposed to be a prerequisite to graduation, but he graduated anyway. Although it was 1969, the height of the Vietnam War, a year when more than a quarter million young men were drafted and other Indianans were being told it would take years to get into the National Guard, Quayle landed a spot in a week flat, after a retired Guard general who worked for his family made a call on his behalf. Quayle was rejected by Indiana University Law School, but he got in anyway- under an affirmative action program, after he visited the dean of admissions, a Republican judge in a city (Indianapolis) where Quayle’s grandfather owned the newspaper. (Soon thereafter, the grandfather made a large contribution to the law school.) Quayle was indifferent law student, but he got a job in the state attorney general’s office anyway. (His father made a few calls.) He was a twenty-nine year old employee of his father’s paper, but he got elected to Congress anyway, with the help of the paper and his own good looks. He was a poor congressman, but he got elected to Senate anyway, in the 1980 Reagan landslide. Two years later the DePauw faculty voted against giving him an honorary degree, but he got it anyway. He was a mediocre senator, but Bush put him on the national ticket anyway. He blew the debate, but he’ll probably be elected vice president anyway. At this rate he’ll be president by cherry blossom time.

The military strength and resources of the State must be reserved for its own defense and protection exclusively …

I am constrained to advert to the refusal of the governors of Maine and Connecticut to furnish the required detachments of militia toward the defense of the maritime frontier…. It is obvious that if the authority of the United States to call into service and command the militia for the public defense can be thus frustrated, even in a state of declared war and of course under apprehensions of invasion preceding war, they are not one nation.

… perhaps it might be right and proper to suggest that the underlying issue here is not about failure of our Army. Perhaps the issue might be that no institutional effort can make up for trying over the past 10 years to fight too many wars with too few soldiers?

The American psyche has not recovered, and likely will not ever fully recover, from the profound and relentless incompetence of George W. Bush's disastrous, multitrillion-dollar war.

I think if people really listened to what our families who serve go through, we could have a realistic discussion of what it means to send young people to war.

The challenges facing our Armed Forces are increasingly complex.

Having previously served in the regular Army, National Guard, and Reserve, I understand well the sacrifices our service members, civilians, and their families make to protect this great country.

In an increasingly volatile and uncertain world, the men and women of the Iowa National Guard play a vital role in overseas contingency operations, domestic response missions and aggressive training exercises to remain a ready and reliable force.

Sitting on the House Armed Services Committee is a great responsibility and an opportunity to represent not only the thousands of veterans in the 33rd Congressional District of Texas that I represent in Dallas-Fort Worth but also the active-duty men and women of our armed forces, national guard, and reserve components.

If somebody in a family is in service, the whole family is in service. I didn't know that. I didn't know our veterans were being deployed seven, eight, nine, 10 times. It's inhumane.

It's pretty clear we have enough Guard people in the United States, but are they capable of handling our oversees commitments as well? We need to figure out how that impacts our ability in Iraq.

Make no mistake, our military readiness is already suffering. According to a recent RAND study, the Army has been stretched so thin that active-duty soldiers are now spending one of every two years abroad, leaving little of the Army left in any appropriate condition to respond to crises that may emerge elsewhere in the world.