Political Quotes

“If you would go back to the most successful military known in history for the longest period of time, spanning centuries, it was the Roman legions. And the Romans had a statement called ``nosce hostem,'' which, of course, is Latin for ``know thine enemy.'' We need to do that here in this Congress. We are part of this effort, of course. Know thine enemy. Von Clausewitz wrote the book on war, his treatise on war, that everyone goes to because he boiled it down to understandable principles, certainly ``know thine enemy,'' but his point was the object of war is to destroy the enemy's will and ability to conduct war. Now, if you know your enemy and you are going to destroy their will and ability to conduct war, you wouldn't just go after their ability, you would go after their will as well. So that has been true throughout history. And if you were charged with the task of defeating the preeminent world's Superpower in, say, about the year 1963 under President Kennedy, ``How do you defeat undefeated America?'' was the question that was presented to the Vietnamese. Enter General Vo Nguyen Giap.”