We are not a country that subscribes to policing any part of the world. The areas we are comfortable with are capacity building, intelligence sharing, exchange of ships, call on each other's ports, joint training and exercises.
Leadership is simply the ability of an individual to coalesce the efforts of other individuals toward achieving common goals. It boils down to looking after your people and ensuring that, from top to bottom, everyone feels part of the team.
He's a novice, but he's had these - he's experienced in leadership in tight circumstances. He started - he dropped the first bomb, led the first air strike into North Vietnam.
Perhaps the two greatest moments of my life were standing on the moon and being outside of the room when my granddaughter was born! We tend not to remember the worst.
But there were highs as well as lows, it was as though they said everybody was picking on the man who had more practical real life experiences than the whole batch of them put together.
My mother was a first-grade teacher, so I credit her with this lifelong intellectual curiosity I have, and love of reading and learning.
After the United States entered the war, I joined the Naval Reserve and spent ninety days in a Columbia University dormitory learning to be a naval officer.
I appeal to you as a soldier to spare me the humiliation of seeing my regiment march to meet the enemy and I not share its dangers.
When I jerked it out the head remained in my leg, where it remains still. There were a couple of inches of blood on the shaft of the arrow when I pulled it out.
During the engagement I tried to throw a strong force through the canon, but I was obliged to use it elsewhere before it had gotten to the supposed location of the village.
I cannot, if I am in the field of glory, be kept out of sight: wherever there is anything to be done, there Providence is sure to direct my steps.
More than ambition, more than ability, it is rules that limit contribution; rules are the lowest common denominator of human behavior. They are a substitute for rational thought.
Nothing so sharpens the thought process as writing down one's arguments. Weaknesses overlooked in oral discussion become painfully obvious on the written page.
All Marines, sailors and civilian Marines, regardless of sexual orientation, are Marines first. Every Marine is a valued member of our war-fighting team.
The Marine Corps has been, and will continue to be, America's Expeditionary Force in Readiness - ready to respond to today's crisis, with today's Marine forces, today.
But all that having been said, you can't, in a city of a million people like Karbala, or 5 million like Baghdad, you can't be in all places at all times.
But the key shift in focus will be from counter-insurgency operations to more and more cooperation with Iraqi security forces and to building Iraqi security capacity.
But clearly the fact that we've gone from zero Iraqi security forces on duty in May to up to 200,000 today is an enormous accomplishment, but it's not enough.
In other words, for every 10 enemy you kill you bring on 20 new recruits to their anti-coalition cause then essentially you are working against yourself.
The United States is the most powerful nation on Earth and it just can't walk away from the Middle East and central Asia and the Horn of Africa.
Al Qaeda has come back. Al Qaeda is a resilient organization. But they're not here in large numbers. But al Qaeda doesn't have to be anywhere in large numbers.
