Rahm Emanuel Quotes

Perhaps we underestimated the challenges in Afghanistan in the past. That's why we are now strengthening and intensifying our commitment.

To leave Afghanistan as a playground for terrorists and adventurers was simply not possible anymore.

I don’t think our troops ought to be used for what’s called nation-building. I think our troops ought to be used to fight and win war.

War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times.

I supported the war in Afghanistan because 3000 of our people were murdered and I thought we had a right to defend the people of the United States.

I predict you will sink step by step into a bottomless quagmire, however much you spend in men and money." (On Vietnam War)

As far as I'm concerned there shouldn't be a single boot on the ground. There's enough American blood in Iraq that lasts forever.

If you think I would have gone to war the way George Bush did, don't vote for me.

We are not at war with Egypt. We are in an armed conflict.

I think all of us who have been in Afghanistan on the ground multiple times know that what we're doing there on the ground is just not sustainable.

There is a direct line relationship between what happened in Afghanistan in the work up to 11 September 2001 and what we're doing in Afghanistan today.

War is the continuation of politics by other means.

We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years … and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in, and otherwise we have returned home … to live our own lives in peace. But there comes a time when soft power or talking with evil will not work where, unfortunately, hard power is the only thing that works.

The uniformed military are usually the last ones who want to intervene, because they're the ones who are going to get shot at and they're the ones who will get the blame.

There is no area where experience matters more than in war and diplomacy.

I could have been very popular if I had launched a military attack on Iran but I chose patience.

Law stands mute in the midst of arms

Our country is being bled daily in an effort to create a democracy in a place where it never existed.

We have to go in and win this war quickly, and then be prepared to help stabilize Iraq over an indefinite period, five to ten years, at a minimum, I believe, using a large fraction of American forces. This is a major undertaking that likely would require a total of 150,000 troops and could stay above 100,000 for several years

If American lives must end, and American treasure be spilled, in countries we barely know, that is the price that change has demanded of conviction and of our enduring covenant.

When you start a military intervention, you do not know what will happen even in the next hour

Wars: You know how you start, but you never know how you end.

The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions ... but by iron and blood.

We cannot lose Afghanistan

I don't recall anyone who was strongly against except one man, and that was the President [JFK]. The President just didn't want to be convinced that this was the right thing to do.... It was really the President's personal conviction that U.S. ground troops shouldn't go in.