Military Decision Quotes

The question of whether we should drop this new bomb on Japan involves such imponderable considerations as to remove it from the field of a military decision.

Nobody ever launched an attack without having misgivings beforehand, You ought to have misgivings before; but when the moment of action is come, the hour of misgivings is passed. It is often not possible to go backward from a course which has been adopted in war. A man must answer "Aye" or "No" to the great questions which are put, and by that decision he must be bound.

There are two things that will always be difficult for a democratic people to do: to start a war and to finish it

What will you tell them at your impeachment? That you had a weapon that would end the war immediately and you didn’t use it?

A key player with respect to sanctions is, of course, China. And so, if a military option were to be exercised, then obviously we would play very heavily in that process. But that's not a decision, fortunately, that the intelligence community makes.

A key to McMaster's thinking is his 1997 book, 'Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies that Led to Vietnam.'

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.

If Mr. Roosevelt can do what he likes without consulting Congress, and we give him our boys, God alone knows what he will do with them.

There's always a reaction based on fear. People assume if you're criticizing a decision to go to war, then you're saying something against the soldiers-which is not the case.

My experience is that if the military didn't want to use force and was confronted with a president that did, the military would come back with what I would call the 'bomb Moscow' scenario. They would say it had to be done with conditions that were so extreme, you obviously wouldn't do it.

I'm going to vote in support of the president of the United States in keeping the troops in Iraq until the president and our military is convinced that the mission is complete.

I will not put the life of an American service member on the line unless that is the option of last resort.

General, you know you have only to give the order and the attack will be made, but I must tell you that I think it a useless waste of brave lives.

I don't want my generals or my defense secretary or my national-security team to ever feel deploying weapons to kill people as routine or abstract, even if the targets are bad people.

I've made this statement many times: If I would have to do it over again, I would have made known the forthcoming Tet Offensive.

I'm not a fan of Secretary Rumsfeld. I don't think he listens enough to his uniformed officers.

In 2011, General Alston, four-star commander in Iraq, recommended to the President, a force level of over 20,000. The President rejected it and pulled out all the forces with what is now known as a disastrous consequence in Syria.

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.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been awarded the highest rank in the country's military. The decision was praised by everyone from Parliamentary leader Kim Jong Un to opposition leader Kim Jong Un.

In any case, decisions on troop levels in the American system of government are not made by any general or set of generals but by the civilian leadership of the war effort.

If they listen to the military people, we probably wouldn't be having an ISIS right now.

Toughest decision was early in my presidency when I ordered 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan. As somebody who had run to end a large troop presence overseas.

I don't think that witchcraft is a religion. I wish the military would rethink this decision.

A steady hand in military affairs is more requisite than in peace, because an error committed in war may prove irremediable.

No man in our position and subject to our responsibilities, holding in his hands a weapon of such possibility for accomplishing the purpose and saving those lives, could have failed to use it and look his countrymen in the face.