To risk death willingly, to venture forth knowing that in so doing you may cease to exist is an unnatural act. To take the life of a fellow human bei… - Jim Mattis

If you don’t fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition, ultimately. So I think it’s a cost-benefit ratio. The more that we put into the State Department’s diplomacy, hopefully the less we have to put into a military budget as we deal with the outcome of an apparent American withdrawal from the international scene.

Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.

In my military judgment, President George H. W. Bush knew how to end a war on our terms. When he said America would take action, we did. He approved of deploying overwhelming forces to compel the enemy's withdrawal or swiftly end the war. He avoided sophomoric decisions like imposing a ceiling on the number of troops or setting a date when we would have to stop fighting and leave. He systematically gathered public support, congressional approval,and UN agreement. He set a clear, limited end state and used diplomacy to pull together a military coalition that included allies we'd never fought alongside. He listened to opposing points of view and guided the preparations, without offending or excluding any stakeholder, while also holding firm to his strategic goal. Under his wise leadership, there was no mission creep. We wouldn't discipline ourselves to be so strategically sound in the future.