Strategic Objectives Quotes

Vision with action is a daydream; action without vision is a nightmare.

I look at what the president [Barack Obama] it doing, it adds up to me. We just have to keep - try to get more support for those people on the ground in Syria and Iraq who have to actually physically take the territory back.

You always have more than one goal in foreign policy.

An operation that kills 5 insurgents is counterproductive if the collateral damage or the creation of blood feuds leads to the recruitment of 50 more.

Today's tactical victory does not guarantee tomorrow's strategic success.

What is SOCOM's mission statement in two sentences? Most people I know in SOF cannot recite it. If it's not clear from the bottom up, then it's a problem.

Any time you use military force, you have got to have a clear purpose that military forces can achieve.

Make no mistake, our troops will be in Afghanistan and Iraq for a long time.

Let us not confuse objectives with methods. Too many so-called leaders of the nation fail to see the forest because of the trees. Too many of them fail to recognize the vital necessity of planning for definite objectives. True leadership calls for the setting forth of the objectives and the rallying of public opinion in support of these objectives.

The sustaining populace, on whose behalf wars are prosecuted, must be sufficiently convinced that its cause is just, that its wars are winnable and that the costs are not disproportionate.

Given that the president has not yet demonstrated why military action is in our best interest, given that the administration will not be constrained to keep boots off the ground, and given that there is no clear end-game, I am against the president's resolution to go to war in Syria.

I shall last a year, and but little longer: we must think to do good work in that year. Four things are laid upon me: to drive out the English; to bring you to be crowned and anointed at Reims; to rescue the Duke of Orléans from the hands of the English; and to raise the siege of Orléans.

If you talk to a British officer or NCO about the strategic objectives of the end state, you'll often get a spirited discussion that's very well informed.

There has to be a reason and objective (to air strikes). What does it do to move the effort down the road for a political conversation?

When you go to war, it’s very important to kill the right people

Realize that agendas drive data, not the other way round

Execution without a long term strategy leads nowhere. Likewise a long term strategy without execution leads nowhere.

The task of the strategist and leadership team is to reduce uncertainty in the areas that they can directly influence in order to pursue attractively difficult objectives.

Foreign policy strategy requires harmonizing means and ends.

Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems.

In my view, airstrikes without an effective ground force are unlikely to make any meaningful contribution to defeating Isis.

In practice, the U.K.'s most consistent strategic objective in relation to Iraq was to reduce the level of its deployed forces.

Americans have been given goals to achieve in Iraq, but not the standards by which to measure progress. And the only assurance Americans have been given that we can reach those goals is to trust the President and his Administration at their word.

Our top priority is our troops, who are making the extraordinary effort to fulfill the mission they have been given. Democrats will work with this Administration to better define that mission and a realistic expectation of success in Iraq.

I think three-to-five years ahead minimum. I have a short-term plan, a five-year plan and a decade plan.