War Decisions Quotes

I always go back to Harry Truman: Should we drop an atomic bomb to save 100,000 lives? That's a hell of a decision to make. Did he make that decision by himself? No, he had advisers.

During the late war I had an infallible rule for deciding what Great Britain would do on every occasion. It was, to consider what they ought to do, and to take the reverse of that as what they would assuredly do, and I can say with truth that I was never deceived.

The President has full responsibility, which cannot be shared, for military decisions in a world in which the difference between safety and cataclysm can be a matter of hours or even minutes.

I still agree with the invasion of Iraq. I don't agree with most of the decisions that accompanied it.

I think when the president of the United States calls for military action, he should do it for a united people, especially when the methods have been so cruel, so explicitly directed at Americans.

Since we replaced the compulsory military draft with an all-volunteer force in 1973, our nation has been making decisions about wars without worry over who fights them. I sincerely believe that reinstating the draft would compel the American public to have a stake in the wars we fight as a nation.

I'm sure that President [Lyndon] Johnson would never have pursued the war in Vietnam if he'd ever had a Fulbright [scholarship] to Japan, or say Bangkok, or had any feeling for what these people are like and why they acted the way they did. He was completely ignorant.

When we go to war, our politicians will be guided by our popular will. And if we believe that torture 'got' bin Laden, then we will be more prone to accept the view that a good 'end' can justify brutal 'means.'

I'm interested in the balance between big currents in history - the economies, the ideologies, social structures, and so on - and the decisions that people have to make. At the heart of all these great decisions to go to war, there are human beings who have to say, 'Yes, let's do it,' or 'No, we won't do it.'

What's been largely forgotten is that Washington was highly passionate and aggressive, and it was only after losing Philadelphia to the British after a string of disastrous battlefield performances that he finally resigned himself to the more conservative approach with which he has since become associated.

I believe that this president [George W. Bush], regrettably, rushed us into a war, made decisions about foreign policy, pushed alliances away. And, as a result, America is now bearing this extraordinary burden where we are not as safe as we ought to be.

[I am] against giving the power of war to the Executive, because [he is] not safely to be trusted with it.

Too many?pass judgement on wartime decisions in the luxury of a peacetime environment.

We need an adult in the White House. When making life-or-death, war-or-peace decisions, a president can't just pop off or lash out irrationally.

'Foyle's War' made me realise that Churchill actually had questionable morals; his decisions meant that good people died. It must have weighed heavily on his soul, but he never let his personal demons get in the way of what was best for our country.

There is every prospect that events arising out of our growing foreign investment will present us in the future with decisions involving war and peace, will bring us, whether we like it or not, to concern ourselves with distant causes.

When it comes to matters of war and peace, we must not act rashly.

I will be as careful as I can in making the most significant decisions any president and commander-in-chief can make about sending our men and women into harm's way.

I feel a special kinship with our military personnel, veterans, and their families. After all, two of my decisions sent them into harm's way.

I'm from Texas, so I'm an LBJ fan. He passed more civil-rights bills than any other president. He made a mistake in Vietnam, but who didn't?

The president is being denounced for not taking the kind of pre-emptive action in Afghanistan that he has been so passionately denounced for taking in Iraq. Damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.