[When I ordered 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan] that was the first time in which I looked out at a crowd of West Point graduates and knew that some of those might not come back because of that decision.
As Iraqi forces gain experience and the political process advances, we will be able to decrease our troop level in Iraq without losing our capability to defeat the terrorists. These decisions about troop levels will be driven by the conditions on the ground in Iraq and the good judgment of our commanders, not by artificial timetables set by politicians in Washington.
In November [2016], Americans are gonna have to make a decision about what we care about and who we are. We get these spasms of politics around immigration and fearmongering and then our traditions and our history and our better impulses kick in. That's how we all ended up here. 'Cause I guarantee you at some point every one of us has somebody in our background who people didn't want coming here. And yet here we are.
Usually, I'm pretty good about sorting through the options and then making decisions that I'm confident are the best decisions in that moment, given the information we have. But there are times where I think I wish I could have imagined a different level of insight.
I have made a lot of tactical decisions that historians will look back and say: He shouldn't have done that. He shouldn't have made that decision. And I'll take responsibility for them. I'm human.
We feel that our actions are voluntary when they follow a decision and involuntary when they happen without decision. But if a decision itself were voluntary every decision would have to be preceded by a decision to decide - An infinite regression which fortunately does not occur. Oddly enough, if we had to decide to decide, we would not be free to decide
The administration took care of a source of instability in Iraq. Envision a world in which Saddam Hussein was rushing for a nuclear weapon to compete against Iran. My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the correct decision in my judgment. We didn't find the weapons we thought we would find or the weapons everybody thought he had. But he was a significant source of instability.
Willpower is not some mythical force that we either have or don't have. Willpower is our decision to use higher mind thinking instead of lazing around in the clutches of our primal mind.
In a time of war, the president must have the power he needs to make the tough decisions, including, if need be, the decision to grant himself even more power.
I want the Iraqis to understand that we are with them and that they have to make tough decisions, and we'll help them make those tough decisions for this country, for this democracy to survive. And they've made some tough decisions.