John McCain Quotes

The problem with deterrence - apparently sometimes forgotten by our former presidents - is that it is not static, but a creature of the moment, captive to impression, and nursed on action, not talk. It must be maintained hourly and can erode or be lost with a single act of failed nerve, despite all the braggadocio of threatened measures. And, once gone, the remedies needed for its restoration are always more expensive, deadly - and controversial - than would have been its simple maintenance.

It would have been very alarming - morally, and in other ways too - if an attack of that nature, the 11 September attacks, had not aroused in us and in our governments and societies the spirit of self-defence. If that had not been one of the responses it seems to me there would have been very grave cause for concern.

We want to look at how we would respond because, as hard as we work to prevent terrorist attacks here North America, if we have a catastrophic terrorist attack, it is the military that is going to have to go in at the request of civilian authorities.

Many defense experts have predicted that we face no greater threat from a single country than from Iran.

The Commission's findings underscore that the nation is still vulnerable to attack and that we must move more quickly to make us safer. We must take the Commission's work and use it to make certain that such horrific attacks never occur again.

The only way we want to give them [the Iranians] arms is dropping them from the bay of a B-1 bomber.

I was haunted by the constant awareness that I might be required to calculate and decide in an instant of time whether some kind of nuclear action might be required in response to a real or imagined or mistaken attack perceived to be under way against my country.

The military has to think in terms of worst case scenarios. In a sense, they have to play the pessimist.

The decision to withdraw our missile defense sites from Poland put us in greater jeopardy, in my view.

In the face of a rising China, along with authoritarian regimes from Brazil to the Philippines to Turkey to Russia, and the constant presence of belligerent non-state actors, we need to reform our military to deal with asymmetrical threats.

You look at Iran, you look at North Korea, you look at terrorists, we don't even know where to look. We don't know where to look. But believe me, you can look all over, so we are going to do that. We need a form of shield. We want to protect our country.

The best way to defend America in this world we live in is to stay on the offense.

We don't really know what Iran are capable of when the gun is put to their head

Without mentioning names, it was other people. Some day, they ought to open the report and find out. But it was other people that knocked down the World Trade Center. So, it's no reason to go into a big - now. But it was a horrible mistake that unfortunately we should never have done it. We have lost trillions of dollars, thousands of lives, wounded warriors, who I love, all over the place. And here is the other part. Iran is taking over Iraq. They have wanted it for decades and decades and decades. They're taking it over.

We can rattle our sabers all we want but, realistically, we don't have troops for an invasion [Iran] and surgical strikes aren't going to work.

The most powerful State in the world, which up to now was relatively protected from terrorist violence, is no longer an inviolable sanctuary.

I think Russia is dangerous, not a superpower. I know what the president is trying to say. I worked for him for five years, not just two.He doesn't want us to overreact. He doesn't want to go back to the Cold War and some superpower competition. But my own view, and I think General Mattis stated something similar today, is that Russia is a challenge for the United States. It is a threat to some of our allies.

How unprepared we are for a terrorist attack.

America is facing some major threats. Cyber warfare, Islamic terror and Russia, does it sound terrible? It sounds like the end of the world.

We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term.

Nidal Hasan communicated with Anwar al-Awlaki, a known radical cleric, asked about waging jihad against his fellow soldiers. The problem is because of political correctness, the [Barack] Obama administration, like a lot of folks here, want to search everyone's cell phones and e-mails and not focus on the bad guys. And political correctness is killing people.

My major focus is national security because that's really what the president runs.

What happened to our nation on a September day set in motion the first great struggle of a new century. The enemies who struck us are determined and they are resourceful. They will not be stopped by a sense of decency or a hint of conscience--but they will be stopped.

Do they think if we destroy our freedoms for the terrorists they will no longer have a reason to attack us?

The new administration seems to be paying no attention to the problem of terrorism. What they will do is stagger along until there's a major incident and then suddenly say, 'Oh, my God, shouldn't we be organized to deal with this?'