Colin Powell War Quotations

War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.

There are lots of countries that are having these kinds of internal civil wars in other parts of the world and nobody is talking about intervening.

There is a war on terror that must be fought. Nobody's immune. And so rather than finding fault with what someone has done by being aggressive in the war on terror, others should redouble efforts to go after terrorist organizations of any kind. Terror has to be brought to an end.

The person who will decide whether or not there will be war or peace is Saddam Hussein, and all he has to do is give up these terrible weapons that he has used to kill fellow Arabs, fellow Muslims in that part of the world, and to step away from his past behaviour which invaded neighbouring countries.

We now believe it is appropriate for Saddam Hussein to be forced to change, either by the threat of war, and therefore that compels him to cooperate. If he cooperates, then the basis of changed regime policy has shifted because his regime has, in fact, changed its policy to one of cooperation. So if he cooperates, then that is different than if he does not cooperate.

Our strategy in going after this army is very simple. First we are going to cut it off, and then we are going to kill it.

I can think of nothing that Saddam Hussein can do diplomatically (to avoid war). I think that time is now over. He's had his chance, he has had many chances over the last 12 years and he has blown every one of those chances.

Terrorism threat is not just to American interests. The assaults in Russia against two airliners, bringing them out of the sky, and against a subway station, and then that horrible scene at the school in Beslan. This kind of terrorist activity no one is immune from it. And so it suggests that we have to do even more together to make sure the civilized worlds join together in the war against terrorism.

No war on the face of the Earth is more destructive than the AIDS pandemic.

President Reagan fueled the spirit of America. His smile, his optimism, his total belief in the ultimate triumph of democracy and freedom, and his willingness to act on that belief, helped end the Cold War and usher in a new and brighter phase of history.

With respect to where we are now, we have a voluntary army. And if we ever go back to conscription I hope that at time it will be the kind of conscription that was put in at the end of the Vietnam War. And that is, everybody is equally liable to be called to serve the nation in time of conflict.

Our senior officers knew the war was going badly. Yet they bowed to groupthink pressure and kept up pretenses. ...Many of my generation, the career captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels seasoned in that war, vowed that when our turn came to call the shots, we would not quietly acquiesce in halfhearted warfare for half-baked reasons that the American people could not understand.

I want to scare the hell out of the rest of the world.

Policies that emanate from ivory towers often have an adverse impact on the people out in the field who are fighting the wars or bringing in the revenues.

The long bitter years of the Cold War are over. America and her allies have won; totally, decisively, and overwhelmingly....So thank you SAC. Job well done. Enjoy your retirement.

No one has done more to prevent conflict - no one has made a greater sacrifice for the cause for Peace - than you, America's proud missile submarine family. You stand tall among our heroes of the Cold War.

President Kennedy didn't negotiate out of the Cuban missile crisis simply because he and Khrushchev got along well. Khrushchev didn't have the cards.

That's not really a number I'm terribly interested in.

Nobody has ever said in the United States government that we are going to war next month. No decision has been made by the president because, as he said to the United Nations, he wants the United Nations to live up to its responsibilities and he wants Saddam Hussein to cooperate.

The United States is not looking for a way to launch war.

War is never a happy solution, but it may be the only solution. We must exhaustively explore other possible solutions before we make the choice for war. Every political and diplomatic effort should be made to avoid war while achieving your objective.

It was not the United States who invaded Kuwait; it was Iraq. It was not the United States that went to war with Iran; it was Iraq. It was not the United States that fired chemical weapons at Iran; it was Iraq. And it was not the United States that murdered innocent Iraqi citizens with chemical weapons; it was Iraq.