We are committed to a world in which we keep America safe, but we recognize that our power doesn't just flow from our extraordinary military but also flows from the strength in our ideals and our principles and our values.
I mean, if Pearl Harbor came along, you could have said the planning was wrong by the military ahead of time or maybe the battleships shouldn't have all been in the harbor and all that kind of thing.
So while I will never minimize the costs involved in military action, I am convinced that a failure to act in Libya would have carried a far greater price for America.
There have been times where, let's say on LGBT issues, when we were trying to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and I got the Pentagon and Bob Gates, a Republican holdover from the [George W.] Bush administration, to authorize a study of how you might end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, headed up by Jeh Johnson, who at that time was a council to the Justice Department. And it was going to take a year to conduct that study, issue a report, and figure out how it might be implemented, what effect it would have on unit cohesion and military effectiveness.
We will continue to deepen our engagement using every element of American power - diplomacy, military, economic development, the power of our values and our ideals.
To this military attitude of the soul we give the name of Heroism... It is a self-trust which slights the restraints of prudence, in the plenitude of its energy and power to repair the harms it may suffer. The hero is a mind of such balance that no disturbances can shake his will.
Israel has legitimate concerns about its security relative to Iran. I mean, you have a large country with a significant military that has proclaimed that Israel shouldn't exist, that has denied the Holocaust, that has financed Hezbollah, and as a consequence, there are missiles that are pointed towards Tel Aviv. There are very good reasons why Israelis are nervous about Iran's position in the world generally.
I would say that I have been consistent in my broad view of how American power should be deployed, and the view that we underestimate our power when we restrict it to just our military power. We shortchange our influence and our ability to shape events when that's the only tool we think we have in the toolbox.
The military world is characterized by the absence of freedom - in other words, a rigorous discipline-enforced inactivity, ignorance, cruelty, debauchery and drunkenness.
It must be thoroughly understood that the lost land will never be won back by solemn appeals to the God, nor by hopes in any League of Nations, but only by the force of arms.