Zitat des Tages von Jim Mattis:
PowerPoint makes us stupid.
To Marines, love of liberty is not an empty phrase... Rather, it's displayed by blood, sweat, and tears for the fallen.
There is no God-given right to victory on the battlefield. You win that through the skill and the devotion, the valor and the ferocity of your troops.
Iran is not a nation-state; it's a revolutionary cause devoted to mayhem.
I've always found, give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers, and I do better with that than I do with torture.
There is only one 'retirement plan' for terrorists.
I've had some 'riotous excursions of the human spirit' alongside the young Sailors and Marines, and it's time to leave the stage to the young leaders who got their rank the old-fashioned way - they earned their stripes in combat.
There are a lot of self-imposed restrictions by people who somehow believe they have to fall in with a certain military cant. There was always a sense that we had to put things into words that would touch our troops' hearts, not just their heads.
Read about history, and you become aware that nothing starts with us.
I'm on record that it didn't really traumatize me to do away with some people.
I don't lose any sleep at night over the potential for failure. I cannot even spell the word.
There is one way to have a short but exciting conversation with me, and that is to move too slow.
You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway.
Engage your brain before you engage your weapon.
While victimhood in America is exalted, I don't think our veterans should join those ranks.
There's no way that that our military power will not erode if a robust American economic revival is not part of the cards.
If you can't eat it, shoot it, or wear it, don't bring it.
Prime Minister Maliki, released from American restraint, acted on his worst instincts, creating enormous distrust in Iraq's Kurdish population and deeply embittering Sunnis in western Iraq's Al Anbar, who lost any confidence in a Baghdad government they saw as adversarial.
There is no room for military people, including our veterans, to see themselves as victims, even if so many of our countrymen are prone to relish that role.
No war is over until the enemy says it's over.
Fight with a happy heart.
The military can buy our diplomats some time.
What is the one country in the Middle East that has not been attacked by ISIS? One. That is Iran. That is more than happenstance, I'm sure.
The Marines have landed, and we now own a piece of Afghanistan.
Policy makers who have never served in the military continue to use the military to lead social change in this country.
For a sitting U.S. president to see our allies as freeloaders is nuts.
Basically, Islamic State is a combined al Qaeda and Lebanese Hezbollah on steroids, destabilizing the region, dissolving borders/changing the political geography in the Mid-east, and hardening political positions that make Mid-east peace-building more remote by the day.
There are going to be good days and bad days. Bottom line.
There are hunters, and there are victims. By your discipline, cunning, obedience, and alertness, you will decide if you are a hunter or a victim.
Marines don't know how to spell the word 'defeat'.
The economy's always been the engine for our national security.
We know that in tough times, cynicism is just another way to give up, and in the military, we consider cynicism or giving up simply as forms of cowardice.
It's a lot easier to stay idealistic if you don't sign two to five next-of-kin letters every day.
I don't think the U.S. military is conservative. It's pragmatic.
The Army was always big on Clausewitz, the Prussian; the Navy on Alfred Thayer Mahan, the American; and the Air Force on Giulio Douhet, the Italian. But the Marine Corps has always been more Eastern-oriented. I am much more comfortable with Sun-tzu and his approach to warfare.
By reading, you learn through others' experiences, generally, a better way to do business, especially in our line of work where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men.
