Quotes About Policy

The wars of the future will be fought by computer technicians and by lawyers and high-altitude specialists, and that may mean war will be increasingly abstract, hard to think about and hard to control.

Another term for preventive war is aggressive war - starting wars because someday somebody might do something to us. That is not part of the American tradition.

The major wars that the U.S. became involved in are all ethically defensible.

As an economic historian, I appreciate what manufacturing has contributed to the United States. It was the engine of growth that allowed us to win two world wars and provided millions of families with a ticket to the middle class. But public policy needs to go beyond sentiment and history.

Market capitalism survived and prospered after the boom-bust industrial revolution of the 19th century, and the Great Depression and world wars of the 20th century. It will recover from the financial panic of 2008-09 and Obamanomics.

'The Iliad' is about a war 1,200 years ago that solved nothing and achieved nothing. Most of our wars achieve very little. But whatever agenda I have gets buried in a work this great. If you're being honest, you realize that, as an artist, you're not a policy maker.

It is often noted that it can be hard for democracies to fight wars because of changing public opinion.

Flamethrowers have been used by many armies in many wars, including by American Marines in Korea and Vietnam. They cause horrific deaths and are thus a serious public-relations liability. The U.S. military apparently phased them out in 1978.

Rather than making loose and unsubstantiated claims that Obama and Clinton created ISIS, it would behoove Trump if he advanced some real policy ideas about how to solve the Syrian and Iraqi civil wars. Of course, to do that he would have to get beyond the inflammatory slogans and sound bites that have characterized his campaign.

I think we would find, if you study the conduct of guerilla-type wars, that the Obama Administration has hit more targets on a broader scale than the Nixon Administration ever did.

Trillions of dollars spent on foreign wars have done nothing to make Americans feel safer at home.

Like many other Americans, I'm tired of the U.S. taxpayer paying for foreign wars, especially when the countries we defend have raked in huge oil profits.

The Constitution has not greatly bothered any wartime President.

That a district judge would overrule the president of the United States on a matter of border security in wartime is absurd.

I believe the military should be wary of diplomacy until war is declared; then the State Department should keep its nose out and let the military do whatever is necessary to win.

Governments have always been wary of the arts because they're wayward and ambiguous and because they deal with feelings rather than facts.

America's sanctions policy is largely consistent and, in a certain sense, admirable. By applying economic restraints, we label the most oppressive and dangerous governments in the world pariahs. We wash our hands of evil, declining to help despots finance their depredations, even at a cost to ourselves of some economic growth.

A successful argument for a government manufacturing policy has to go beyond the feeling that it's better to produce 'real things' than services. American consumers value health care and haircuts as much as washing machines and hair dryers.

Washington isn't a city, it's an abstraction.

Washington treats Social Security like a Ponzi scheme.

To avoid entangling alliances has been a maxim of our policy ever since the days of Washington, and its wisdom no one will attempt to dispute.

People have no confidence that Washington, both sides of aisle, are coming together to try and do what's right for the economy.

Do we really want Washington administrators coming between us and our doctors?

It's time for a 21st-century retirement age. If 40 is the new 20 and 50 is the new 30, why shouldn't 70 be the new 65? The last time Washington politicians tinkered ever so gingerly with the government-sanctioned retirement age, Ronald Reagan was in office and Generation X-ers were all in diapers.