Woodrow Wilson Quotes

For the remote contingency by which a national army must be always judged, namely, the contingency of war with a first class power, the Army is practically unprepared.

We're facing a very different sort of threat now, a more amorphous threat, al Qaeda, terrorism, and so on. And so the military has abandoned the two-war strategy.

In order to assure an adequate national defense, it is necessary - and sufficient - to be in a position in case of war to conquer the command of the air.

As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe - it's a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment.

If frontier wars there chance to arise, and if thereupon we shall fortify, yet will occasion the training up of our youth in the discipline of war and make a number fit for the service of the wars and for the defense of our people there and at home.

I don't believe that any prime minister would send our troops into conflict without the assurance from the military that they had the equipment necessary for the operation.

In reference to the Army and Navy, lately employed with so much distinction on active service, care shall be taken to insure the highest condition of efficiency; and in furtherance of that object, the Military and Naval Schools, sustained by the liberality of Congress, shall receive the special attention of the Executive.

Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace

The military's job is to win the war. A president's job is to win the peace.

As Commander in Chief, I will maintain the strongest military in the world, keep faith with our troops and go after those who would do us harm. But after a decade of war, I think we all recognize we've got to do some nation building here at home, rebuilding our roads, our bridges and especially caring for our Veterans who sacrificed so much for our freedom.

Now that you're Secretary of War, what kind of an army do you think we ought to have?

And we will win the war, and there will be costs. But the military folks understand that, and so do I, and so does the Secretary of Defense.

Defense is the first act of war.

I have every confidence in the ultimate success of our joint cause; but success in modern war requires something more than courage and a willingness to die: it requires careful preparation.

War makes extremely heavy demands on the soldier's strength and nerves. For this reason, make heavy demands on your men in peacetime exercises.

Striving for peace and preparing for war are incompatible with each other, and in our time more so than ever.

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

I've always had the fantasy of doing a boot camp for a military film, at some point. I've always wanted to know what the experience is like, to feel that mounting pressure of going off to war and needing to be so present and physically aware of your body because you ultimately need to fight for your life and for your country.

This is the true lesson of our history: war, preparation for war, and foreign military interventions have served for the most part not to protect us, as we are constantly told, but rather to sap our economic vitality and undermine our civil and economic liberties.

It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army. Hard to imagine.

Make no mistake, our military readiness is already suffering. According to a recent RAND study, the Army has been stretched so thin that active-duty soldiers are now spending one of every two years abroad, leaving little of the Army left in any appropriate condition to respond to crises that may emerge elsewhere in the world.

I am for relying for internal defense on our militia solely till actual invasion, and for such a naval force only as may protect our coasts and harbors from such depredations as we have experienced; and not for a standing army in time of peace which may overawe the public sentiment; nor for a navy which, by its own expenses and the eternal wars in which it will implicate us, will grind us with public burthens and sink us under them.

It’s useful to compare our preparations for epidemics with our preparations for war.

I am quite confident that in the foreseeable future armed conflict will not take the form of huge land armies facing each other across extended battle lines, as they did in World War I and World War II or, for that matter, as they would have if NATO had faced the Warsaw Pact on the field of battle.