I liked the military life. They teach you self-sufficiency early on. I always say that I learned most of what I know about leadership in the Marine Corps. Certain basic principles stay with you - sometimes consciously, mostly unconsciously.
I first met Kim Dae Jung when he was a Korean dissident whose life was threatened by the military regime ruling in Seoul. I was Ronald Reagan's Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, and Kim was directed to me because the East Asia Bureau at ...
I have lucky boots for military embeds, a lucky scarf for road trips, a lucky handbag, and lucky days of the week. I tap into my gut for 'right' or 'wrong' feelings about such simple things as whether I should go grocery shopping.
To his lasting credit, President Reagan never wavered. He recognized the strategic importance of staying the course, both in terms of denying Moscow the military hegemony it sought in Western Europe and of restoring the will, cohesiveness, and securi...
Deterrence is still fundamentally about influencing an actor's decisions. It is about a solid policy foundation. It is about credible capabilities. It is about what the U.S. and our allies as a whole can bring to bear in both a military and a nonmili...
I think you also understand that one of the key things that's got to be done in Iraq is to build a mentality of understanding that the military needs to be subordinate to civilian control and respectful of its own people.
Al-Qa'ida does not follow a traditional command structure, wear uniforms, carry its arms openly, or mass its troops at the borders of the nations it attacks. Nonetheless, it possesses the demonstrated capability to strike with little notice and cause...
America should meet its obligations in the form of Social Security, Medicare, our ability to pay our military, legally binding legislation that allows unemployment compensation, the judiciary, the federal court system, the federal prison system, all ...
We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.
Our priority is to go after ISIL. And so what we have said is that we are not engaging in a military action against the Syrian regime. We are going after ISIL facilities and personnel who are using Syria as a safe haven, in service of our strategy in...
Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable sh...
Not all the Americans in Iraq are those who torture and murder, or course they're not, I don't know how many are doing it, I know it is systematic throughout the United States military I think that's been revealed.
Able Danger was a top-secret military planning operation, established in '99 by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to identify cells of al-Qaida worldwide and to take out al Qaida terrorists. They identified five cells worldwide, one of them i...
The one word you use in military flying is duty. It's your duty. You have no control over outcome, no control over pick-and-choose. It's duty.
The use of large-scale military force in volatile regions of underdeveloped countries is difficult to do right, has major unintended consequences and rarely turns out to be quick, effective, controlled and short lived.
I didn't go into the NASA program to pick up rocks or to go the moon or anything else. I went in there because I was a military officer, and that was the next notch in my profession.
Then when I went to Iraq and saw the strength and character the men and women in our military service exhibit every day and their belief in what they're doing, I knew I wanted to get that on film and share it with everyone. They are my inspiration.
We know with certainty that the Obama administration has re-defined 'militants' to include any military-age males they kill regardless of whether they were actually doing anything wrong. We know with certainty that the U.S. Government has detained an...
You're not just going out there, maybe sacrificing your own life. There's also sacrifices still going on at home. You can serve in the military and have a good marriage, but you just need to be aware of it so you can take those steps to take care of ...
The question was never whether the United States, E.U., NATO, Arab League, U.N. Security Council, and African Union could together using economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, and military attacks to bring Qaddafi down. The question was always how ...
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 se...
