Donald Rumsfeld Quotes
… you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.
Donald Rumsfeld, U. S. Secretary of Defense (Republican), U. S. Congressman (Republican, IL), White House Chief of Staff, "Troops put Rumsfeld in the hot seat". CNN. December 8, 2004
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
She was the 5th female member of the House and its first Jewish member. She was the first woman on the House Military Affairs Committee, and was one of the few Republicans who advocated spending for military preparedness. At the time of her service, many Republicans were strict isolationists.
Much of the Chinese military had been distracted from military readiness in favor of political, economic, and ceremonial, activity along with extensive economic corruption. The People’s Liberation Army is a major political force in China which made this a very noteworthy chastisement. Leading Generals were with him however. See {632518}.
See {637854} for a quote on the soundness of our military planning.
Saddam claimed to his people that Iraq had essentially won the Gulf War as they were stronger afterwards than ever before and they had been able to suppress the Kurds and the Shiites with the helicopters and arms with which the emerged from the war and had been allowed to keep.
This was an official publication of the U. S. Army. The First World War had very little affect on future military preparedness At that time conservatives in Congress were very isolationist and military preparedness was not a high priority or even a significant political issue. The Democrats then were more supportive of military spending than the Republicans. It took World War II, for which America was very unprepared, to produce a change in public and political opinion regarding military preparedness.
He later provided a copy to Hezekiah Niles, February 5, 1819 which is the source of the quotation since Henry never mentioned it.
This verse is quoted in the Constitution of Iran (Article 151) in the section regarding it's military establishment.
He had wanted more troops for the Afghan War than President Obama would approve. The Republican members of the Congress tried to make the difference a major issue of a President not supporting his commanders. The General made this brilliant response.
Essentially similar ideas were expressed earlier by George Washington and in antiquity by Vegetius and Horace.
From the beginning, the issue of whether the country should have a standing army or depend on the militia and the citizen soldier has been controversial. There is a , romantic American myth about the Militiamen in Colonial and Revolutionary America—the citizen soldiers who would leave their farms and rise to the military necessity of the day. However, not only were the militia very hard to muster to duty, but most actually didn’t own or have experience with firearms, and the prevailing opinion of knowledgeable military leaders from George Washington on down was that the militia were not very good soldiers. See {613015}, {613016}, {613022}, {613027}, {621987}, {621988}, {613030}, {613033}, & {613056}
What is interesting about this quote is that it is very much like many American politicians who support a large and strong military.
“There” referred to the new American Colonies. He was advocating mobilizing the poor and destitute of England and sending them to America to provide manpower for a needed workforce and to be soldiers in the event of wars. The poor have historically been used indiscriminately for military manpower needs until Post WWII America where the military technology began to require minimum standards of intelligence and literacy. With the all volunteer military and higher standards, the majority of the military in America has been from the lower socioeconomic classes.
Donald Henry Rumsfeld is a retired American politician. Rumsfeld served as Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under Gerald Ford, and again from January 2001 to December 2006 under George W. Bush. He is both the youngest and the second-oldest person to have served as Secretary of Defense. Additionally, Rumsfeld was a three-term U.S. Congressman from Illinois (1963–69), director of the Office of Economic Opportunity (1969–70), counsellor to the president (1969–73), the United States Permanent Representative to NATO (1973–74), and White House Chief of Staff (1974–75). Between his terms as Secretary of Defense, he served as the CEO and chairman of several companies.