
Quoted in "The Fight for the Pacific" - Page 157 - by Mark Gayn - 1941.
A Soldier's Declaration (July 1917)
Context: I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.
I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this War, on which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest.
Quoted in "The Fight for the Pacific" - Page 157 - by Mark Gayn - 1941.
2011, Address on interventions in Libya (March 2011)
Context: America has an important strategic interest in preventing Qaddafi from overrunning those who oppose him. A massacre would have driven thousands of additional refugees across Libya’s borders, putting enormous strains on the peaceful — yet fragile — transitions in Egypt and Tunisia. The democratic impulses that are dawning across the region would be eclipsed by the darkest form of dictatorship, as repressive leaders concluded that violence is the best strategy to cling to power. The writ of the United Nations Security Council would have been shown to be little more than empty words, crippling that institution’s future credibility to uphold global peace and security. 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.
As quoted at ABC News (11 June 2007) http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3264588
“If I am in a place where there are enemies, I become a soldier.”
Saying 202
“I am a soldier. I get orders. I execute them.”
To Raoul Nordling
The Race to Liberate Paris, warfarehistorynetwork.com https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/the-race-to-liberate-paris/
“I am nothing, neither a chief nor a soldier.”
Recorded by a reporter after Sitting Bull's retreat to Canada after being defeated in the Black Hills War, originally published in the New York Herald on November 16, 1877. Published in Utley, Robert M. The Lance and the Shield. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1993. p. 190.