Defense Is Not Like Other

Power... Military Success Is Not Sufficient To Win: Economic Development, Institution-building And The Rule Of Law, Promoting Internal Reconciliation, Good Governance, Providing Basic Services To The People, Training And Equipping Indigenous Military And Police Forces, Strategic Communications, And More Of These, Along With Security, Are Essential Ingredients For Long-term Success.

One Of The Big Changes In The Congress Since I First Came To Washington Is That All Of These Folks Go Home Every Weekend. They Used To Play Golf Together; Their Families Got To Know Each Other, Go To Dinner At Each Other's Homes At Weekends - And These Would Be People Who Were Political Adversaries.

I've Been Very Sensitive For A Long Time To The Repeated Pattern, During Economic Hard Times Or After A War, Of The United States' Essentially Unilaterally Disarming.

Soviet Foreign Ministers Would Come In To See The President All The Time, Routinely. Jimmy Carter Stopped That After The Invasion Of Afghanistan. Ronald Reagan Resumed It In 1984, I Think. And So The Fact Of A Meeting Like That I Think Is Not That Big A Deal.

I Think In The Context Of Senior Government Positions, I Think An Anecdote Of What I Told President-elect Barack Obama When We Had Our First Meeting. And I Said, "you Don't Know Me. Can You Trust Me? Why Do You Think You Can Trust Me?" And So On. But At The End, I Said, "you Can Count On Me To Be Loyal To You. I Will Not Leak. I Will Keep My Disagreements With You Private. And If I Cannot Be Loyal, I'll Leave." Loyalty Means Doing What You Think Is In The Best Interest Of That Person As Well As The Country.