Too often we just look at these glistening successes. Behind them in many, many cases is failure along the way, and that doesn't get put into the Wikipedia story or the bio. Yet those failures teach you every bit as much as the successes.
I think anybody in our - in the, in the national security apparatus has, has got to take full cognizance of their responsibility for the safeguarding of classified information.
As a Naval officer, I've been all over the world, and one of the foundational lessons I learned was that parents everywhere would like to raise their children to a higher standard of living in a peaceful environment. That's a universal goal for families.
I have met parents all over the world, and they all just want to raise their kids to a higher standard than they were raised with.
I think the central mission in Afghanistan right now is to protect the people, certainly, and that would be inclusive of everybody, and that in a, in an insurgency and a counterinsurgency, that's really the center of gravity.
I'm a Vietnam veteran. I was here when there was no public support, not just for the effort in Vietnam, for the mission in Vietnam, but for our men and women in uniform.
The mission - the overall mission is to dismantle and defeat and disrupt al-Qaeda. But we have to make sure there's not a safe haven that returns in Afghanistan.
When I go there to Afghanistan or Pakistan, the question both asked - and if it's not asked, implied - is, 'Are you staying this time?' because we left last time, in 1989 in Afghanistan, and we sanctioned Pakistan from 1990 to 2002. So I think it's a fair question.
I was in the military for over 40 years, and one of the principles I kept with me was that there's an expectation globally that the U.S. will lead. Questions about that expectation have certainly risen in recent years. The fact that there's even a question about that is worrisome to me, and I think needs to be for a lot of people.
