Hiram G. Parks Quotes

I could have been very popular if I had launched a military attack on Iran but I chose patience.

Thinking about the war now and the occupation later is not an acceptable solution.

I don't recall anyone who was strongly against except one man, and that was the President [JFK]. The President just didn't want to be convinced that this was the right thing to do.... It was really the President's personal conviction that U.S. ground troops shouldn't go in.

I don’t want to give any indication we’re getting involved in a war. I’m playing it down.

We are not at war with Egypt. We are in an armed conflict.

Either a war has to be fought, or it doesn't.

I still think it would be a great mistake to go into a war without support of our friends and allies.

I'm really interested in how conflicts arise and how they reach points of no return. I'm no pacifist. Sometimes force is necessary. But war is a choice.

To be deeply committed to negotiations, to be opposed to a particular war or military action, is not only considered unpatriotic, it also casts serious doubt on one's manhood.

We are talking about using military force, but we are not talking about war. I think that is an important distinction.

I see in our relation with the [Austrian] Bund an error of Prussia's which, sooner or later, we shall have to repair ferro et igni ["sword and fire"], unless we take advantage betimes of a favorable season to employ a healing remedy [i.e. war] against it.

There is no area where experience matters more than in war and diplomacy.

It is not every cause of war that should lead to war.

Those who are to conduct a war cannot in the nature of things, be proper and safe judges of whether a war ought to be commenced, continued or concluded.

We’re not going to need as many people to do peacekeeping as we needed to fight the war.

Military force is not the first option, but it is there if needed.

Whenever we get involved in a war, the White House seems to have 3 priorities: We cannot appear to be losing; we must appear to be winning; we must look like we know what we are doing.

I don’t think we should go to war with one person’s authority..

Whereas the laws of the United States have been for some time past and now are opposed and the execution thereof obstructed in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings or by the powers vested in the marshals by law. Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States in virtue of the power in me vested by the Constitution and the law, have thought fit to call forth, and hereby do call forth, the militia of the several States of the Union, to the aggregate number of 75,000, in order to suppress said combinations and to cause the laws to be duly executed.

… the financial cost of a [military] strike isn’t a reason to acquiesce in mass murder in Syria.

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.

War is the continuation of politics." In this sense war is politics and war itself is political action.... It can therefore be said that politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.

Let's be clear: Neither Secretary Powell or I opposed the notion of removing Saddam Hussein by force, but we wanted to avoid the war if we could. But if we couldn't, the notion of removing Saddam Hussein from the scene seemed eminently sensible, given that you had, what, 16 or so U.N. Security Council resolutions basically saying the same thing.

Politics and war are remarkably similar situations.

I also hear your president say that war is the means of last resort and I think he means that. I met him last autumn and he assured me that they wanted to come through and disarm Iraq by peaceful means, and that's what we are trying to do as hard as we can.