I came to believe that a leader isn't good because they're right; they're good because they're willing to learn and to trust.
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I want the American people to understand, we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
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We need a strong civil society where the connection between different people and groups is firm and vibrant, not brittle and divided.
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I go back and think of President Kennedy, who had a military service background, but he comes into the presidency, and he's faced with a decision on the Bay of Pigs, with the C.I.A. and the military giving him data, and it turns out very badly.
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In my life as a soldier and citizen, I have seen time and time again that inaction has dire consequences.
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The military does very well taking average people and making them very good leaders.
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I had known Colonel Charlie Flynn since he was a lieutenant 23 years earlier, and I remembered how his first child, Molly, had been born while Charlie was deployed to the first Gulf War.
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Military leaders, many of whom were students of counterinsurgency, recognized the dangers of an incremental escalation and the historical lesson that 'trailing' an insurgency typically condemned counterinsurgents to failure.
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If every soldier is authorized to make one mistake, then we lose the war.