War Involvement Quotes

And while I am talking to you mothers and fathers, I give you one more assurance. I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.

The President [FDR] has been scheming for years to involve us in war.

Twice in my lifetime the long arm of destiny has reached across the oceans and involved the entire life and manhood of the United States in a deadly struggle.There was no use in saying We don't want it; we won

I am strongly of the opinion that the war ought not to have taken place and that we ought not to have become parties to it, but once in it the whole future of our nation is at stake and we have no choice but do the utmost we can to secure success.

We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.

Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.

I believe in a strong national defense. But it's my belief that neither Iraq nor Afghanistan poses a threat to national security, and we shouldn't be involved in either area.

It is most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores in the hope that the United States will become embroiled in the war.

Nations want the United States to fight their wars, until they go bad.

From the very beginning, the American republic has never shrunk from foreign wars …. There has scarcely been a year since its founding that American soldiers haven’t been overseas … American foreign policy largely consists of doctrines about when and where to intervene in other people’s countries.

When you have a peace movement that has an actual war, it's different from one that has wars that our country is not totally involved in. During the war in Vietnam, and to a lesser degree the wars in Central America where our country was directly involved, it was easier to organize.

I'm old enough to remember John Kennedy sending a few advisers into Vietnam. I'm very worried we'll get in and we'll get mired down in something we don't have any idea what to do [with].

Our involvement in this war is treason to the interests of international socialism.

Before we put an American in harm's way, tell us why. No one wants to see the region descend into further chaos. There's a lot of concern about getting embroiled in another Vietnam and ... about sending American troops once again to fight someone else's war.

I don't go around trying to stir up foreign wars.

[America] well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standards of freedom …. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit.

Actual combat experience is the only teacher. You never come out of a skirmish without having picked up a couple of new tricks; without having learned more about your enemy...Total involvement with the war was the only thing that kept me alive and pushing.

Frankly, I would not have made any difference in Vietnam, but much more is what difference it would have made in me.

Often, my liberal Canadian brethren will claim that 'Canada doesn't get involved in foreign affairs or wars overseas. We turn the other cheek.' No. Canada doesn't have the military might to exercise any option other than to remain uninvolved. They aren't turning the other cheek. They're pulling a Sweden.

Clearly the American military has been a force for good for the United States. There's a reason we have a standing military. But there's something to be said for having a much smaller military because then we wouldn't be tempted to get involved in things we shouldn't be getting involved in.

I've been arguing this for months. This is not our war. This is not a war we should be in. Australia's better spending its time negotiating with North Korea.

We're in more wars today under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton than under George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan. Yet they tell you that Bush lied and people died, and we were all over the Middle East.

Secretary [John] Kerry has called Civil War [in Syria] an unbelievably small war that we're going to get involved with.

We've just let too many things happen. And now, try to turn around and fix it. Getting involved in a [Syria] civil war directly was never something I thought made sense.

Britain will not get involved in a European war. Dreadnoughts have no wheels.