War Policy Quotes

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.

If ever we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down till that tribe is exterminated, or driven beyond the Mississippi... in war, they will kill some of us; we shall destroy them all.

Yet the people, and even the clergy, incapable of forming any rational judgment of the business of peace and war, presumed to arraign the policy of Stilicho, who so often vanquished, so often surrounded, and so often dismissed the implacable enemy of the republic. The first moment of the public safety is devoted to gratitude and joy; but the second is diligently occupied by envy and calumny.

Hillary talks the talk, but in my view, she is as big a corporatist, as big a war monger, as big an imperialist as any of the Republican presidential candidates. Her rhetoric is less offensive.

War should never be thought of as something autonomous, but always as an instrument of policy.

There's a tendency to look at anybody who joined the military as if they underwrote everything that happened policy-wise. That's not really the case. I have a friend who both protested the Iraq War and joined the military, and ended up serving two deployments in Afghanistan.

I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.

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

What is not conservative about saying, 'Don't go to war unless we go to war properly with a full declaration of war and no other way?'

I think the Right has made a serious mistake in adopting a moral-values strategy, because they’re winning in the short run. But in the long run, they’re going to lose this debate because they won’t be able to restrict it to two issues (abortion & gay marriage). Once you open that door to a values conversation, it’s going to undercut a right-wing economic agenda, which values wealth over work and favors the rich over the poor, or resorts to war as the first resort and not the last.

There is between Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Adams a diversity of opinion respecting the Algerians. Adams things peace should be purchased from them. Mr. Jefferson finds it as cheap and more honorable to cruise against them. I am inclined to the latter opinion ...

Israel does not start wars.

In order to have defense here at home, we have to have offense in Iraq and Iran.

The mainstream of both the Republican and Democratic Parties are equally committed to militarism today.

Accidents will happen. We have formulated our policy on the assumption that some bluffing contest will eventually go wrong, resulting in dead soldiers. The focus has to be on minimizing damage.

I know a way for no Americans to die in Iraq: Leave.

It is a principle incorporated into the settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute..

All I'm saying is [John McCain] cannot look a soldier in the eye and say "Questioning the president is less supportive to you than extending your tour three months." You should be coming home to your family.

The destruction of civilian hamlets, the killing and the wounding of civilians, became vastly greater than it had been before, and it was very upsetting; but I still couldn't bring myself to understand that the policy itself was wrong.

I agree that obviously we cannot retreat from our position in Vietnam…. But we are going to have to muddle through for a while and see what we do.

To carry the spirit of peace into war is a weak and cruel policy. When an extreme case calls for that remedy which is in its own nature most violent, and which, in such cases, is a remedy only because it is violent, it is idle to think of mitigating and diluting. Languid war can do nothing which negotiation or submission will do better: and to act on any other principle is, not to save blood and money, but to squander them.

Our reports about civilian casualties here, about the resistance of the Iraqi forces, are going back to the United States. It helps those who oppose the war when you challenge the policy to develop their arguments.

American policy seems to be wed to a perpetual state of war. Why? History shows that the world will always be in flux or turmoil, with different peoples competing for visibility and power. The U.S. cannot fix the fate of every nation.

Here's a president who gets 47 or 48 percent of the vote and takes 100 percent of the power, as if he had a mandate. He snuck into the presidency with the aid of political cronies, his father's having appointed members of the Supreme Court, his brother governor of Florida. And then he takes total control. And this is a president who seems to react to everything with force. Now we've had two wars. We've killed a lot of people. For anybody who is interested in not being a warlike nation anymore, and becoming a nation respected in the world, it becomes important to defeat Bush.

I just don't see why anybody would vote Republican in the Army. If you want to support the troops, if I was a troop, I would say, 'You know how to support me? Don't send me to stupid wars.'