Quotes & Sayings About The U.s. Military

U.S. analysts estimate that Russian military expenditures have tripled during the Bush-Putin years, in large measure a predicted reaction to the Bush administration's militancy and aggressiveness. — Noam Chomsky

Hit them in their personal lives, visit their homes . Actively target U.S. military establishments within the United States ... strike hard and fast and retreat in anonymity. Select another location, strike again hard and fast and quickly retreat in anonymity ... Do not get caught. DO NOT GET CAUGHT. Do not get sent to jail. Stay alert, keep active, and keep fighting. — Craig Rosebraugh

Some 3,500 Muslims now serve in the U.S. military. The overwhelming majority of them are loyal Americans who see no conflict between their personal religious duty and service to their country. But there can no place in our military for those persons of any faith who do. America has now seen the horrors of what 'diversity at any cost' can lead to. — Linda Chavez

According to recent opinion polls, a large majority of Iraqis believe that the U.S. military has no intention to leave Iraq, and that it would stay even is asked by the Iraqi government to leave. — John Conyers

Mary, Mary don't say no, down the basement we shall go. Slap your ass against the wall, here i come balls and all. Won't your daddy be disgusted, when he sees your cherry busted. Won't your mama be surprised, when she sees your belly rise! Sound Off....(ect.) — U.S. Military

Success in past U.S. conflicts has not been strictly the result of military leadership but rather the judgment of the president in choosing generals and setting broad strategy. — Robert Dallek

For interests that are vital to the U.S. - that is, essential for our survival and wellbeing - the U.S. should be prepared to use military force - including unilaterally, if necessary. — Graham T. Allison

In occupied Iraq, the introduction of new paper money took almost a year, 20 or so Boeing 747s, the mobilisation of the U.S. military's might, three printing firms, and hundreds of trucks. — Yanis Varoufakis

The weather records of the U.S.A. are the best kept and most accessible in the world, thanks to consistent government/military taxpayer support. There are longer European data sets, but the U.S.A. data is enough to forecast major extreme events. — Piers Corbyn

The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history ... On every level - moral, strategic, military and economic - Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences. — Tomas Young

Funny how the U.S. sends in the military to fight "terrorists" in any country which has resources we want ... — Ziad K. Abdelnour

In 1975, the Americans suffered a spectacular military defeat at the hands of North Vietnam and the Vietcong, with U.S. helicopters seeking to rescue leading U.S. personnel from the tops of buildings as Vietnamese guerrillas closed in on the centre of Saigon. — Martin Jacques

We are seeing reports that NATO's sending early warning radar planes and German military personnel to Turkey. That might reduce the chances of another incident like this jet shoot down. And obviously both NATO and the U.S. are pressing their ally Turkey to urgently deescalate the situation. — Peter Kenyon

The U.S. is not constructing a palatial embassy, by far the largest in the world and virtually a separate city within Baghdad, and pouring money into military bases, with the intention of leaving Iraq to Iraqis. — Noam Chomsky

The U.S. military has done a phenomenal job of creating these facilities almost over-night and dealing with these sworn enemies of America with more respect and dignity than they ever would have considered according our officers had they captured any. — Charles Bass

Oil shaped U.S. decisions about the Middle East during both Democratic and Republican presidencies. The administration of President Jimmy Carter, a liberal Democrat, had produced the "Carter Doctrine." Under this doctrine, the United States claimed the right to defend its interest in Middle Eastern oil "by any means necessary, including military force." In — Howard Zinn

The whole military structure in Haiti that existed until the early 1990s was put in place by the American occupation. At the top there were Southern white officers, who led an army that crushed the indigenous resistance - the cacos. A high-ranking U.S. officer said when he arrived, "To think these niggers speak French!" Later, Haitian officers attended the notorious School of the Americas at Fort Benning. The threat from the U.S. is something that is always hanging over people's heads: If we don't behave, we'll have occupation again. — Edwidge Danticat

The United States, for generations, has sustained two parallel but opposed states of mind about military atrocities and human rights: one of U.S. benevolence, generally held by the public, and the other of ends-justify-the-means brutality sponsored by counterinsurgency specialists. Normally the specialists carry out their actions in remote locations with little notice in the national press. That allows the public to sustain its faith in a just America, while hard-nosed security and economic interests are still protected in secret. — Robert Parry

Fom the out set, the War on Terror was sharply different from other U.S. military actions in the strong support it received from American women. Normally, men back military action by 10 to 20 points more than women do. But, after 9/11, women felt more endangered by terror and backed action against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden as strongly as men did. — Dick Morris

The culture of the U.S. military is such that human enhancement is accepted as a goal, taking people beyond the norm. There are so many resources going into that kind of research. — Jessa Gamble

Enemies are necessary for the wheels of the U.S. military machine to turn. — John Stockwell

War may represent the failure of diplomacy, but even the best diplomats operate on credit. Sooner or later someone who's less reasonable than you are is going to call you, and if your military can't cover your I.O.U.s, you lose. — David Weber

The U.S.'s major strength factor and weapon is its economy. If you cripple it, you cripple the military. — Chester W. Nimitz

Sexual assault has no place in the military. It is a violation of everything that the U.S. military stands for. — Leon Panetta

During the Second World War, the Germans took four years to build the Atlantic Wall. On four beaches it held up the Allies for about an hour; at Omaha it held up the U.S. for less than one day. The Atlantic Wall must therefore be regarded as one of the greatest blunders in military history. — Stephen Ambrose

Our waterboarding program is based on the U.S. military training program ... tens of thousands of U.S. servicemen were waterboarded pursuant to this program to prepare them for the possibility of being captured someday so that they would know what it felt like. — Jose Rodriguez

Desert Storm was a war which involved the massive use of air power and a victory achieved by the U.S. and multinational air force units. It was also the first war in history in which air power was used to defeat ground forces. — Merrill McPeak

The United States Central Command of the Armed Forces has asked Geraldo Rivera to leave Iraq. It should also be noted that the only three other people that the U.S. military has asked to leave Iraq are Saddam Hussein and his two sons. — Jon Stewart

Cyberspace is the battlefield of tomorrow ... Instead of confronting us head-to-head on the traditional battlefield, adversaries will confront the U.S. at its point of least resistance- our information infrastructure. — Fred Thompson

How many cities of forty thousand, which is the population of Burlington, have a foreign policy? Well, we did. During my tenure as mayor we made the point that excessive spending on the military and unnecessary wars meant fewer resources to address the needs of ordinary people. Somewhere in the Reagan Library, or wherever these things are kept, there is a letter from the mayor of Burlington opposing the U.S. funding of contras in Nicaragua. The letter stated, "Stop the war against the people of Nicaragua. Use our tax dollars to feed the hungry and house the homeless. Stop killing the innocent people of Nicaragua." As — Bernie Sanders

We need to ensure our men and women in uniform are equipped with the very best money can buy. We also have to make sure critical military technologies are developed in America and that the U.S. defense manufacturing base remains healthy and strong. — Joe Lieberman

It's the founding ideals that the flag draped over my father's coffin stand for.
Truth: His father was buried in Kenya, never served in the U.S. military. Which flag draped his father's coffin? And what ideals does the flag that draped his father's coffin in Kenya stand for? — Barack Obama

And I believe only with a strong America will we defeat this radical group, this apocalyptic group called ISIS. That's why when I'm president we are going to rebuild our intelligence capabilities. And they're going to tell us where the terrorists are. And a rebuilt U.S. military is going to destroy these terrorists. — Marco Rubio

The only feasible solution is a political reconciliation ... Mr. President, the time is now to put pressure on the Iraqi government to change. That is our only hope. Sending a contingent of U.S. military personnel, no matter how small, will be counterproductive to that goal. Our presence will send the wrong message to the Malaki government that we will support them despite what they have done and continue to do to destroy the country by alienating the minority populations of Iraq. — Mike Coffman

I had been involved in U.S. intelligence in Berlin, Germany, while in the military and had worked with a contact with the Central Intelligence Agency office there. — George J. Mitchell

But blaming Islam is a simple answer, easier and less controversial than re-examining the core political issues and grievances that resonate in much of the Muslim world: the failures of many Muslim governments and societies, some aspects of U.S. foreign policy representing intervention and dominance, Western support for authoritarian regimes, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, or support for Israel's military battles with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. (p. 136-137) — John L. Esposito

Amid the American military "surge" in Iraq in 2006, the U.S. commander in chief, General David Petraeus, ordered his senior officers to read Twenty-Seven Articles so that they might gain clues on winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. Presumably skipped over was Lawrence's opening admonition that his advice applied strictly to Bedouin - about 2 percent of the Iraqi population - and that interacting with Arab townspeople "require[s] totally different treatment. — Scott Anderson

The U.S. has perverted the U.N. weapons process by using it as a tool to justify military actions, falsely so ... The U.S. was using the inspection process as a trigger for war. — Scott Ritter

WikiLeaks exposed corruption, war crimes, torture and cover-ups. It showed that we were lied to about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; that the U.S. military had deliberately hidden information about systematic torture and civilian casualties, which were much higher than reported. — Jemima Khan

It is time, I suggest, to stop the practice of allowing Muslims to serve in the U.S. military. The reason is simple: the more devout a Muslim is, the more of a threat he is to national security. — Bryan Fischer

If there is one lesson for U.S. foreign policy from the past 10 years, it is surely that military intervention can seem simple but is in fact a complex affair with the potential for unintended consequences. — Fareed Zakaria

Gangs have had connections to the U.S. Military in every period since the founding of the country. — Carter F. Smith

It's not the job of the U.S. military to do nation-building or produce democratic utopias. — Ted Cruz

With no other security forces on hand, U.S. military was left to confront, almost alone, an Iraqi insurgency and a crime rate that grew worse throughout the year, waged in part by soldiers of the disbanded army and in part by criminals who were released from prison. — John Spratt

I oppose U.S. military intervention in Iraq. I believe that we should not send troops or engage in air strikes-our nation's military involvement needs to be over. The United States has already spent billions of dollars in Iraq while our nation has endured a crumbling infrastructure, cuts to our social programs, a lack of investment in job training and creation, and sadly, a failure to take care of our veterans. Let's focus our resources at home. Over 4000 men and women have sacrificed their lives for Iraq. That is enough. — Janice Hahn

If we have reason to believe someone is preparing an attack against the U.S., has developed that capability, harbours those aspirations, then I think the U.S. is justified in dealing with that, if necessary, by military force. — Dick Cheney

Over the past five decades, civilian officials have favored the use of military force over the opposition of their military counterparts. In doing so, the 'best and brightest' have blundered into long-term engagements in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan that didn't favor U.S. national security interests ... Paradoxically, the military is far less likely than their civilian counterparts to resort to the use of force. — Melvin A. Goodman

The moral panic about supposedly unpatriotic educators was driven by international war hysteria combined with agitation over the growing domestic political strength of teachers unions. In 1917 and 1918, Congress passed the Espionage and Sedition Acts, which sought to ban public speech and actions "disloyal" to the United States military and government, especially among socialists, communists, pacifists, immigrants, and other groups perceived as affiliated with European leftism. More than any other force, the American Legion, a veterans' organization, pushed this ethos of unquestioning patriotism onto the nation's public schools. The Legion was influential: 16 U.S. senators and 130 congressmen identified as members. It promoted the idea that the Communist Party in Moscow actively recruited American teachers in order to enlist them in brainwashing the nation's youth. The Legion saw all left-of-center political activity as unacceptably anti-American. — Dana Goldstein

The real threat to U.S. military power is nuclear proliferation, because if every little country has nuclear weapons it becomes very tricky for the United States to engage in military action. — Immanuel Wallerstein

The old refrain is that there are no atheists in foxholes. That's nonsense. They are there by the millions. There is little in combat that will lead one to look upon the Creator with favor. What can't be there, instead, is the individualist, the selfish, the self-consumed, the self-centered, the aloof loner. Such a man cannot long survive. The terror of combat cannot be described by fear of death. There are worse things. The world can suddenly become a very cold place...He needs warmth, a fire, to survive: His discipline, his training, his duty, honor and country, his family, and ultimately the very oak of his manhood are thrown into the blaze, but they are not enough to save him. At the end, he needs the warmth of his comrades. Otherwise, all he will have with which to face the cold dark will be his own spent soul. — Frank Boccia

Fundamentalist groups like Christian Embassy have infiltrated the very top of the U.S. military and gained positions of influence in the Pentagon. — Darrel Ray

There is no battle space the U.S. Military cannot access. They said we couldn't do Afghanistan. We did it with ease. They said we couldn't do Iraq. We did it with 150 combat casualties in six weeks. We did it so fast we weren't prepared for their collapse. There is nobody we can't take down. The question is, what do you do with the power? — Thomas P.M. Barnett

In March 1861 alone - Lincoln's first month in office - the U.S. Senate would receive for its advice and consent some sixty pages of names submitted for civilian and military appointments ranging from secretary of state to surveyor-general of Minnesota. — Harold Holzer

If there are threats to the United States, then I would of course go back to the president and make a recommendation that may include the use of U.S. military ground force. — Martin Dempsey

The Japanese fought to win - it was a savage, brutal, inhumane, exhausting and dirty business. Our commanders knew that if we were to win and survive, we must be trained realistically for it whether we liked it or not. In the post-war years, the U.S. Marine Corps came in for a great deal of undeserved criticism in my opinion, from well-meaning persons who did not comprehend the magnitude of stress and horror that combat can be. The technology that developed the rifle barrel, the machine gun and high explosive shells has turned war into prolonged, subhuman slaughter. Men must be trained realistically if they are to survive it without breaking, mentally and physically. — Eugene B. Sledge

Egypt is the second-largest recipient over a long period of U.S. military and economic aid. Israel is first. — Noam Chomsky

Christine Gray wrote in her remarkable 1986 PhD dissertation, Thailand: The Soteriological State in the 1970s: Any study of contemporary Thai society must account for the U.S. influence on that polity and the mutual denial of that influence. Thailand's relationship with the United States is complex, heavily disguised and, in many instances, actively denied by the leaders of both countries... In many cases, it is difficult if not impossible to determine the extent of American influence in Thailand. Thailand is a nation of secrets: of secret bombings and air bases during the Vietnam War, of secret military pacts and aid agreements, of secret business transactions and secret ownership of businesses and joint venture corporations. This is precisely the point; the American presence has taken on powerful cosmological, religious and even mythic overtones. The American influence on the Thai economy and polity has become a symbol of uncertainty, of men's inability to know the truth. — Andrew MacGregor Marshall

Obama has compiled a record of hostility to religion that is unmatched by any other president in American history. Author David Barton calls Obama "America's most Biblically-hostile U.S. president." As commander in chief of the United States military, the office in which he enjoys unquestioned authority, he has been particularly aggressive in curbing religious expression. The military employs a high concentration of people who believe in God and Country - a formulation that Obama wants to replace with an allegiance to the State and its Progressive Social Engineering. — Phyllis Schlafly

History demonstrates that previous military drawdowns invited aggression by our enemies. After World War I, America drew down forces until the U.S. Army had fewer than 100,000 men in uniform. That weakness invited Nazi aggression in Europe and the imperial Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. — Frank Gaffney

The U.S. must renounce any U.S. interest in constructing permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq. — Peter DeFazio

I have found there are real objects under in intelligent control being seen on the ground and in our skies worldwire. The unknowns have varied over the decades from 22 percent in my own civilian files, 30 percent in the University of Colorda Condon Committee scientific studies, to at least 40 percent recently revised found in the U.S. Air Force Project Blue Book military investigations. This is not acceptable, no matter who is doing the investigations. — George Fawcett

In committing an estimated 3,000 U.S. forces to join international Ebola relief efforts in West Africa, President Obama seems to be fulfilling the plans of highly influential progressive groups who seek to transform the American military into more of a social-work organization. — Aaron Klein

Their words flitted past, like short sentences typed out on a keyboard, typing away Yosop's past and future. They all said "American troops," but Yosop knew for a fact that the troops had simply been passing through. They were never stationed in Sinchon; they were in a rush to get further north. Both Yosop and his brother Yohan knew for a fact that during those forty-five days, before the arrival of the U.S. troops and after their departure, most of the military strength in the area had consisted of the security forces and the Youth Corps - all Korean. (2007: 99) — Hwang Sok-yong

My guess is that before Obama departs, he will adopt some of the more aggressive military options he has been resisting, such as 'safe zones' inside Syria and more aggressive deployment of U.S. special forces. — David Ignatius

The good news from the U.S. military survey of focus groups is that Iraqis do accept the Nuremberg principles. They understand that sectarian violence and the other postwar horrors are contained within the supreme international crime committed by the invaders. — Noam Chomsky

What outrages me as a representative of journalists is that there's not more outrage about the number, and the brutality, and the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq ... They target and kill journalists ... uh, from other countries, particularly Arab countries like Al -, like Arab news services like Al-Jazeera, for example. They actually target them and blow up their studios with impunity ... — Linda Foley

Flamethrowers have been used by many armies in many wars, including by American Marines in Korea and Vietnam. They cause horrific deaths and are thus a serious public-relations liability. The U.S. military apparently phased them out in 1978. — Rachel Kushner

I had a question. 'Why does the name Pearl Harbor sound so familiar?'
The lieutenant colonel's eyes narrowed. 'Pearl Harbor is the most famous U.S. military base in the world,' he said crisply. 'It's the only place on U.S. soil that has been attacked in a wars, since the Revolutionary War.'
None of this was ringing a bell, but you already know I'm totally uneducated.
Gazzy leaned over to whisper, 'It was a movie with Ben Affleck.'
Ah. Now I remembered. — James Patterson

Every war and conflict that the United States enters has its own ROE [rules of engagement]. Contrary to what most people think, the U.S. military does not have a complete license to kill, even in wartime. We are not a barbaric state, and we do not enter any war with the intention of unilaterally killing anything in our path. We go out of our way to spare civilian lives, to keep those who are not in the war out of it
sometimes even at the expense of risking our own soldiers' safety. We do this by creating strict rules to which our soldies adhere. These rules govern when they can fire, when they cannot; what type of force they can use, what type they cannot; what they can do in particular situations, and what they cannot. The reason for this is that battles can become very confusing very quickly, and a common soldier needs simple rules to guide him, to know when he is or is not allowed to kill
and who is and is not the enemy. — Michael DeLong

Setting aside embassies, consulates and military bases, Rose Atoll of American Samoa is the southernmost point of U.S. controlled territory. Guam, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and half a dozen other islands are all further south than Ka Lae.
While Ka Lae is not the southermost point of the United States, it is the southernmosr point of the fifty states. — John Richard Stephens

Adolf Hitler declared war in 1941. By 1942, Allen Dulles was moved to Switzerland for the purpose of rounding up and importing German scientific "specialists" to the United States. Two years before the war ended (or its fate was decided), the United States was making arrangements for Nazi scientists, arms experts, to come to our democracy (for which the boys were fighting and dying at that moment).12 From 1945 until 1952, the U.S. military brought over 642 alien "specialists" and their families from Nazi Germany. They were known collectively by the code-name "Paperclip." German missile and rocket experts, munition makers, war experts were carefully selected and placed in aerospace programs and armament manufacturing.13 — Mae Brussell

Some anti-Americanism derives simply from our being a colossus that bestrides the earth. But much anti-Americanism derives from the role U.S. political, economic and military power has played in denying such freedoms to others. — Samantha Power

U.S. power flows from our unmatched military might, yes. But in a deeper way, it's a product of the dominance of the U.S. economy. — David Ignatius

In early 1961 a new president, John F. Kennedy, was told by military leaders and civilian officials that the Kingdom of Laos - of no conceivable strategic importance to the U.S. - required the presence of American troops and perhaps even tactical nuclear weapons. Why? Because if Laos fell, Asia would go red from Thailand to Indonesia. — Jeff Greenfield

The emphasis on technology over an understanding of the realities of war and conflict reflect[s] the ahistoricism not only of too much of the U.S. military officer corps, but of the American educational system as well. Our mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan were the result of a pervasive failure to understand the historical framework within which insurgencies take place, to appreciate the cultural and political factors of other nations and people, and to encourage the learning of foreign languages. In other words, in Afghanistan and Iraq we managed to repeat many of the mistakes we made in Vietnam, because America's political and military leaders managed to forget nearly every lesson of that conflict. — Peter R. Mansoor

For more than a decade, the United States had been giving large-scale military aid to the French colonialists, and then to the American-installed but authoritarian South Vietnamese government, to fight nationalists and communists in Vietnam. More than 23,000 U.S. military advisers were there by the end of 1964, occasionally engaging in combat. On the other side of the world, the American public knew and cared little about the guerrilla war. In fact, few knew exactly where Vietnam was. Nevertheless, people were willing to go along when their leaders told them that action was essential to resist communist aggression. — Edward S. Greenberg

We're probably going to see some post-2014 military presence - some U.S. presence and a NATO presence - and while we've got much work to do in the next 29 months, we'll have additional time later for the continued professionalization of the Afghan security forces. — John R. Allen

The actual legacy of Desert Storm was to plunge the United States more deeply into a sea of difficulties for which military power provided no antidote. Yet in post-Cold War Washington, where global leadership and global power projection had become all but interchangeable terms, senior military officers...were less interested in assessing what those difficulties might portend than in claiming a suitably large part of the action. In the buoyant atmosphere of that moment, confidence in the efficiency of American arms left little room for skepticism and doubt. As a result, senior military leaders left unasked questions of fundamental importance. What if the effect of projecting U.S. military power was not to solve problems, but to exacerbate them? What if expectations of doing more with less proved hollow? What consequences would then ensue? Who wear bear them? — Bacevich

A case could be made that even the shift into R&D on information technologies and medicine was not so much a reorientation towards market-driven consumer imperatives, but part of an all-out effort to follow the technological humbling of the Soviet Union with total victory in the global class war: not only the imposition of absolute U.S. military dominance overseas, but the utter rout of social movements back home. The technologies that emerged were in almost every case the kind that proved most conducive to surveillance, work discipline, and social control. Computers have opened up certain spaces of freedom, as we're constantly reminded, but instead of leading to the workless utopia Abbie Hoffman or Guy Debord imagined, they have been employed in such a way as to produce the opposite effect. — David Graeber

'24' and 20th Century Fox and Sky TV are not responsible for training the U.S. military. It is not our job to do. To me, this is almost as absurd as saying, 'The Sopranos' supports the mafia, and by virtue of that, HBO supports the mafia.' — Kiefer Sutherland

National Review once opined, many years ago, that, every year, the Nobel peace prize should go to the U.S. secretary of defense: The American military is the number-one guarantor of peace in the world. But maybe something like a Nobel freedom prize would be a more appropriate award for Reagan than a peace prize. — Jay Nordlinger

In February 2004, the two traditional torturers of Haiti - France and the United States - combined to back a military coup and send President Aristide off to Africa. The U.S. denies him permission to return to the entire region. — Noam Chomsky

If a person is a U.S. citizen, and he is on the battlefield in Afghanistan or Iraq trying to attack our troops, he will face the full brunt of the U.S. military response. — John O. Brennan

The rulling to kill the Americans and their allies - civilians and military - is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in anyh country in which it is possible to do it ... to comply iwth God's order to kill the Americnns and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan's U.S. troops and the devil's supporters allying with them ... — Osama Bin Laden

Because of the destruction of the Afghan and Iraqi infrastructure, the enormous problem of policing, the incredible expense of rebuilding, and the $700 billion U.S. defense budget, it was foreseeable that the "military conflict" there could go on for decades, to the delight of military contractors like Halliburton, Lockheed and General Dynamics. War is good for business. — Kenneth Eade

The U.S. couldn't play a military role in different areas like Iraq and Afghanistan without huge quantities of oil. So a shortage or disruption in oil would not only damage the U.S. economy; it would undercut American military supremacy. — Michael Klare

Rather than inserting more Marines and engineers to harden and defend the American Embassy - thus sending an unequivocal message that such an assault against American sovereign territory in the heart of Tehran would never be tolerated again - the bureaucrats back at the White House and State Department had panicked. They'd reduced the embassy's staff from nearly a thousand to barely sixty. The Pentagon had shown a similar lack of resolve. The number of U.S. military forces in-country had been drawn down from about ten thousand active-duty troops to almost none. The only reason Charlie had been sent in - especially as green as he was - was because he happened to be one of the few men in the entire U.S. diplomatic corps who was actually fluent in Farsi. None of the three CIA guys on site even spoke the language. — Joel C. Rosenberg

The president's very right about one thing: When you have a disaster of that scale, whether it be natural or a terrorist attack, there's only one part of our entire government, state or local, that is equipped to handle it, and that's the U.S. military. — Warren Rudman

For the past decade, U.S. generals have dominated the military effort against the insurgency. Washington has chosen Afghanistan's leaders. Americans have conceived, planned, financed, and overseen economic projects in which Afghans have played only supporting roles. And yet there has never been a possibility that the United States and its allies could win the war against the Taliban. Only Afghans themselves can do that. — Anonymous

If Peking wasn't stopped in the peninsular war, he argued, China would be recognized as "the military colossus of the East." U.S. prestige would plummet, and the world's new nations would gravitate toward neutralism. — William Manchester

I proposed a law that every country where the U.S. has a military base - those people should be allowed to vote in the American election. — Bill Ayers

The U.S. military was segregated 'til the Korean War, and the blacks in World War Two were totally segregated. — Clint Eastwood

Where journalists have gotten themselves in trouble over the last few decades is that their skepticism often extends only to American officials, the U.S. military and Republican politicians. — Linda Chavez

Let me be clear: I'm a believer in a robust military, which is essential for backing up diplomacy. But the implication is that we need a balanced tool chest of diplomatic and military tools alike. Instead, we have a billionaire military and a pauper diplomacy. The U.S. military now has more people in its marching bands than the State Department has in its foreign service - and that's preposterous. — Nicholas D. Kristof

One year of the world's military spending equals 700 years of the U.N. budget and equals 2,928 years of the U.N. budget allocated for women. — Zainab Salbi

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the arm of the Pentagon most responsible for shiny, futuristic technology, recently gave a $100,000 grant to Logos Technologies, Fairfax, Va.-based defense tech company, to develop a silent, hybrid-engine motorcycle for the military. — Anonymous

The highest levels of the U.S. military, the Defense Department, and the White House must be held accountable for putting our troops at greater risk and diminishing Americas moral authority across the globe. — Lawrence Korb

Obama was elected on a slogan of hope and change because both were in short supply: the military exhausted by two wars, the banks failing their public trust, the U.S. Congress a comedy of dysfunction, and a federal government that seemed designed to idle on the sidelines. — Nancy Gibbs

Hispanics are half as likely to enlist in the military as either whites or blacks. The recruit-to-population ratio for whites is 1.06. For blacks it is 1.08. For Hispanics, it's only 0.65. The media not only neglect to highlight this particular underrepresentation, they lie about it. An article published by the Population Reference Bureau - subsidized by taxpayers - is titled: "Latinos Claim Larger Share of U.S. Military Personnel." To the untrained eye, this would seem to be saying that Latinos claim a larger share of U.S. military personnel. In fact, however, by "larger share," the headline means "larger" compared with the past - not compared with other groups. The actual article admits that Hispanics constitute less than 12 percent of all enlistees, compared with 16 percent of the civilian workforce. Moreover, despite their machismo culture, a majority of Hispanic troops are women.15 — Ann Coulter

U.S. Government propaganda tries to give the impression that aerial bombardment achieves near-surgical accuracy, so that military targets can be destroyed with minimal effect on civilians. Technical documents give a different picture. — Noam Chomsky