Jim Mattis Quotes

No one starts a war—or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so—without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war, and how he intends to conduct it.

I think that our weakness is understanding that when we go to war, we go to war to win.

[To the House of Representatives before casting the only vote against allowing George W. Bush to use 'all necesary and appropriate force' in response to 9/11:] We must be careful not to embark on an open-ended war with neither an exit strategy nor a focused target. We cannot repeat past mistakes.

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

I believe sincerely that we should bring in U.N. peacekeepers and bring our troops home.

At a time when the insurgents are saying that time is working against them, my Democratic colleagues are introducing a measure to set a timetable for withdrawal in Iraq that will undercut the momentum that the insurgents themselves say we have built in Iraq.

Not only military leaders are sometimes guilty of designing a war as if it were a bridge that only spans half a river, civilian leaders may initiate military campaigns without being troubled by the fact that they have no plan to bring their war to a close.

I will not be the first American President who lost a war!

War is best left to the Generals. I believe in letting the military authorities manage the army. If they manage it badly, we shall make a bad matter worse by tampering and interfering.

The U.S. military cannot fight Iraq's war for them.

I was never able to convince myself that there was a cost-free alternative course, as from 1961, or that any of the different strategies since proposed, especially those involving stronger military action, would have made sense.

You need to think, when you get involved in wars, how you're going to get out of them.

We must have a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. forces - or at the very least a plan for it - something the administration has incredulously failed to do for over two years.

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

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.

Never go to war unless your willing to win.

We will be drawing down some troops. If the president wants to try to turn that into the beginning of a success, he actually, I think, has some opportunity.

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

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.

To go to war, you must always think of, can you win?

War is failure of diplomacy.

Wars without military objectives have a tendency to go on forever.

You can’t take military action in war without the support of government.

Regime change cannot be the objective of military action.

I don’t see any role for American peacekeepers in the Middle East because there is no peace to be kept.