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message: Have faith in your subordinates after you have trained them.
Never advantage yourself at the expense of your comrades.
Everyone has a plan, Mike Tyson said, until he gets punched in the mouth.
If you commit to the defense of this country, giving a blank check to the American people payable with your life, you expect a career path in return.
We have been fighting on this planet for ten thousand years; it would be idiotic and unethical to not take advantage of such accumulated experiences.
If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent,
because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enou...
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When you impose command via that sort of tight communications control, you create “Mother may I?” timidity.
When they make mistakes while doing their best to carry out your intent, stand by them.
light hands on the steering wheel guiding the regiment.
The Vietnam vets put their stamp on us, reminding us that once you made general, you never had a bad meal and you never again heard the truth.
“To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.”
Trust remains the coin of the realm.
What do I know? Who needs to know? Have I told them?
Operations occur at the speed of trust.
I don’t care how operationally brilliant you are; if you can’t create harmony—vicious harmony—on the battlefield, based on trust across different military services, foreign allied militaries, and diplomatic lines, you need to go home, because your leadership is obsolete.
observe what is going on, orient yourself, decide what to do, and act
“As officers,” he wrote, “you will neither eat, nor drink, nor sleep, nor smoke, nor even sit down until you have personally seen that your men have done those things. If you will do this for them, they will follow you to the end of the world. And, if you do not, I will break you.”
I’ve always tried to be hard on issues but not on spirits.
Great nations don’t get angry; military action should be undertaken only to achieve specific strategic effects.
Once we assault, don’t stop us.
“First we’re ordered to attack, and now we’re ordered to halt,” I said. “If you’re going to take Vienna, take fucking Vienna.”
Language is a weapon.
If there’s something you don’t want people to see, you ought to reconsider what you’re doing.
Note the neutral wordings: “bombs detonating” and “deaths from violence.” It sounds as if a hurricane or other force of nature caused the “incidents.” This agent-less reporting granted a moral bye to an enemy that had murdered hundreds of women and children. Conversely, mistakes by our forces were reported in the active voice, putting them in the worst possible light, as if these acts defined the customary performance of our units.
Our way is right, but it is also difficult.
I believed then and believe today that NATO is absolutely necessary for geopolitical and cultural solidarity among Western democracies.
The idea of American democracy, as inspiring as it is, cannot stand without the support of like-minded nations.
At the same time, I strongly believe that Europe must contribute more.
“Culture eats strategy for lunch.”
culture. Every institution gets the behavior it rewards.
PowerPoint is the scourge of critical thinking. It encourages fragmented logic by the briefer and passivity in the listener.
Only a verbal narrative that logically connects a succinct problem statement using rational thinking can develop sound solutions.
Each morning, I tried to go through my emails before working out and having a light breakfast. I knew in many cases that if I didn’t answer promptly, a delayed response could result in weeks of work for staffs undoing hasty decisions made by someone without a full appreciation of the problem.
In our military, lack of time to reflect is the single biggest deficiency in senior decision-makers.
If a democracy does not trust its troops, then it shouldn’t go to war.
Unless you want to lose, you don’t tell an enemy when you are done fighting,
Pakistan views all geopolitics through the prism of its hostility toward India.
That means that if you’re going to fight a limited war anywhere, it should be limited in its political end state but fully resourced militarily, to end it quickly.
Acting strategically requires that political leaders make clear what they will stand for and what they will not stand for.
no more false threats or failing to live up to our word.
Those who choose to not serve, and especially those in civilian oversight roles, must show reserve in directing social changes inside our military.
We are not a petri dish for social experiments.
Intent is a formal statement in which the commander puts himself or herself on the line.
I used “touchstones” such as “No better friend, no worse enemy” and “First, do no harm,” among others, leavened with history’s enduring lessons, to guide subordinates who would face situations requiring them to make instantaneous decisions on their feet. I often chose phrases from antiquity,
Nothing compensates for a lack of trust.
Risk aversion will damage the long-term health, even survival, of the organization, because it will undercut disciplined but unregimented thinking. Because maverick thinkers are so important to an organization’s adaptability, high-ranking leaders need to be assigned the job of guiding and even protecting them, much as one would do for any endangered species.
The growth in global wealth and the freedoms enjoyed by so many since 1945 were the direct results of America’s willingness to lead. You have to go a long way to find a country more willing to admit its mistakes, listen to its friends, and correct its ways.
