Rand Paul Quotes

It is not patriotic to commit young Americans to war unless our national security clearly requires it.

What I've learned, and will try to remember from now on, is that defending your country's credibility is never sufficient reason to fight a war.

Frank Capra made a series of films during World War II called 'Why We Fight' that explored America's reasons for entering the war. Today, with our troops engaged in Iraq and elsewhere for reasons far less clear, I think it's crucial to ask the questions: 'Why are we doing what we are doing? What is it doing to others? And what is it doing to us?'

I can tell you this: If I'm ever in a position to call the shots, I'm not going to rush to send somebody else's kids into a war.

Some in my party threaten to send a message that they don't know a just war when they see it, and more broadly that they're not prepared to use our military strength to protect our security and the cause of freedom.

I certainly am not willing to involve the country in a foreign war for the object of acquiring Texas.

The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions ... but by iron and blood.

The military people don't like it; the government probably doesn't like it, but the people should know what they're sending their young people into when they permit their governments to declare war and engage in war.

War is not merely justifiable, but imperative upon honorable men, upon an honorable nation, where peace can only be obtained by the sacrifice of conscientious conviction or of national welfare.

It is a tough choice. In war, people die. But when we refuse to confront the enemy, we will face the enemy in New York and Washington, as we did on 9-11. As for responsiblity, of course we stand by our decision to go to war on Iraq. President Kennedy said that friend and foe alike should know where America stands.

We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years and we've done this as recently as the last year in Afghanistan and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in, and otherwise we have returned home to seek our own lives in peace.

I would have fought in WW2, so I wasn't a pacifist in the broader sense. I prefer to be a pacifist, but I think there are exceptions and times to defend yourself or your country, but that war wasn't one of them.

Most people think the Iraq war has increased the probability of an attack. However, it's difficult to put this aspect into financial terms.

I think the President ought to bring everybody that's in American uniform back because we're headed for war.

I think in America, especially today, our relationship to war is incredible distant. Yet narratives of war have such a primal power in this culture. They mainline directly into a whole series of emotional reactions and understandings of American patriotism, masculinity, and all of these other things.

John McCain is the guy that has advocated for war everywhere. He would bankrupt the nation.

I just can't vote to go to war unless I think there's a real clear-cut American purpose in the war, that we're going to win and that we're not going fight for stalemate.

You can be killed just as dead in an unjustified war as you can in one protecting your own home.

I supported the war in Afghanistan because 3000 of our people were murdered and I thought we had a right to defend the people of the United States.

If they can send you to war at 18, maybe it's beneficial for some people to think that most of us gotta go to war for our own existence.

If you think I would have gone to war the way George Bush did, don't vote for me.

Our presence in Afghanistan is not worth the price of any more American lives or treasure.

As far as this citizen is concerned, the decision to commit men and women, who are also sons and daughters, to combat is an extraordinarily important one, and not to be done to just feel good; to be done to absolutely accomplish a mission.

As Commander in Chief of the United States Military, I will never send our sons and daughters and our brothers and sisters to die in a foreign land without telling the truth about why they're going there.

Washington has thrown their soldiers on the fire.