Quotes About Strategy

Military history is rife with examples of generals and presidents who squander strategic advantage by failing to press a battlefield triumph to its conclusion. Here was the same story again, involving not only complacency but also inexplicable strategic judgment, fractured decision making, and confusion.

Atta selected early September after determining Congress would be in session. Although bin Laden continued to lobby for the White House as a target, Atta still favored the Capitol, believing it would be easier to strike; the evidence suggests the decision may have remained unresolved until the very end.35

Nor did the United States have a strategy for engagement, democratization, secular education, and economic development among the peaceful but demoralized majority populations of the Islamic world.

McChrystal knew he could not "defeat" the Taliban with the troops available, although it was not clear at this point whether that was truly America's objective.

McNeill argued, the war hadn't changed. They had to be patient. Privately, McNeill figured it would take up to two decades to put Afghan forces in a position where they could defend the country adequately on their own.

you can send a battalion of U.S. Marines, not only anywhere in Afghanistan, but literally anywhere in the world, and they will clear an area. Anywhere in South-Central Asia, a battalion of Marines is going to be so tactically dominant that they can clear that area. And as long as you are willing to keep them there, they can hold it. . . . The problem is handing the cleared area to the Afghans and doing something with it."10

Mr. Ambassador," Rice replied, "in counterinsurgency, if it doesn't seem like you're winning, you're not winning." She added, "This war isn't working."20

What's the big picture?" Husain Haqqani asked Pasha during this period. "We're a small country," he answered. "They are the big ones. We have to keep our pride. We have to outmaneuver them. It's all about being smart.

Bush asked whether killing bin Laden would end the problem. Pavitt and Tenet replied that it would make an impact but not end the peril.

I'M TIRED OF SWATTING FLIES," President Bush told Condoleezza Rice in the Oval Office that spring after another in a series of briefings about al Qaeda threats. "I want to play offense."13

Doug Lute noted to an interagency meeting that the Taliban appeared to be succeeding with very lean operating funds: "We spend $60 billion a year," Lute remarked. "They need $60 million a year."7

The Americans and their Canadian and European allies were in a hurry to get the Afghan army and police organized, so they could go home. The Afghan soldiers being trained could not withdraw from the challenge of the Taliban, so they were open to local truces and other improvised, even cooperative strategies with the enemy to avoid direct combat.

One view at the highest levels of the U.S. embassy in Kabul by summer's end was that Karzai "was a very clever madman—just because he was insane doesn't mean he was stupid.

Annette says that if you want your husband to help you shop, giving him an electronic toy like a walkie-talkie is a great way to get him to "play.

Our failure to properly deal with Germany and Japan early cost the world dearly later on. We dare not make the same mistake with China.

Men don't come up to you to just talk. We come up to you with a plan. We're looking across the room at you, and we don't care about your hopes and dreams. We don't care about what your future holds. We saw something we wanted.

A man fishes for two reasons: he's either sport fishing or fishing to eat, which means he's either going to try to catch the biggest fish he can, take a picture of it, admire it with his buddies and toss it back to sea, or he's going to take that fish on home, scale it, fillet it, toss it in some cornmeal, fry it up, and put it on his plate. This, I think, is a great analogy for how men seek out women.

Now that you have it all together, let me ask you this: What's next? Knowing what's next is paramount to your success. The what's next is the reason to keep waking up. The what's next is the driving force for all successful people. There always has to be a what's next.

when a man approaches you, he has a plan. And the main plan is to sleep with you, or to find out what it takes to sleep with you.

he's talking to you to determine exactly how much he has to invest to get what he wants.

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.

Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.

Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation.

A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.