I ought to have seized the initiative in 1938 instead of allowing myself to be forced into war in 1939; for war was, in any case, unavoidable. However, you can hardly blame me if the British and the French accepted at Munich every demand I made of them! (14th February 1945)
You have to run risks. There are no certainties in war. There is a precipice on either side of you - a precipice of caution and a precipice of over-daring.
On 9-11, we discovered that we cannot escape from the world. To me personally, this was a life-changing experience, and I realized, as did all Americans, in a way that is impossible to describe, that we were not protected by the two oceans. It was necessary to eliminate threats before they showed up on our doorstep. I agree that we should not be getting caught up in far away wars. But I believe Iraq was central to our war on terrorism.
German people are essentially pacifists. Many still remember the experience of World War II. And they may not have seen Saddam Hussein as evil a person as a lot of other people have.
Before the war it had seemed incredible that such terrors and slaughters, even if they began, could last more than a few months. After the first two years it was difficult to believe that they would ever end.
Why am I always at war with myself? Why have I told, as if upon compulsion, what I knew all along I ought to have withheld? Why am I making a friend of this woman beside me, in spite of the whispers against her that I hear in my heart?
The world has never been as divided as it is now, what with religious wars, genocides, a lack of respect for the planet, economic crisis, depression, poverty, with everyone wanting instant solutions to at least some of the world's problems or their own. And things only look bleaker as we head into future.
Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling one's pulse and taking one's temperature.
The Civil War created in this country what had never existed before - a national consciousness. It was not the salvation of the Union; it was the rebirth of the Union.