I commanded an Army unit, and I placed the highest priority on a commander’s authority to lead, manage, and discipline the men and women under his or her command within the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
In 2011, General Alston, four-star commander in Iraq, recommended to the President, a force level of over 20,000. The President rejected it and pulled out all the forces with what is now known as a disastrous consequence in Syria.
The admiral, or commander in chief of a squadron, being frequently invested with a great charge, on which the fate of a kingdom may depend, ought certainly to be possessed of abilities equal to so important a station and so extensive a command.
I have to admit that all of us creatively involved with ‘Commander’ absolutely intended to put the term ‘Madam President’ into the zeitgeist. I can’t deny it.
As Commander of the Faithful, it is out of the question that I fight Islam. We need to fight violence and ignorance. It is true, when one strolls out, one sees women with scarves and men with beards. This has always been the case in Morocco. Morocco is built on tolerance.
As a military officer – and this is – I have lived my life in the national security realm – I don’t think I could vote for Donald Trump, because, you know, for one, I’m not a fan of a president or a commander in chief wrapping his arms around any dictator. That’s very important to me.
I remember I did a character in ‘Robocop’ years ago – Commander Cash. I wore this really ridiculous outfit, and my face was covered. You couldn’t recognize me in the suit; you could only hear my voice.
My grandfather was a commander in the Navy. He was very proud of his service, and he lived his entire life as though he was still serving.
And if you want a commander in chief who will fulfill the most solemn obligation of the president to keep this nation safe, then support a candidate who has demonstrated the commitment, the judgment, the experience, the clarity of vision, to identify our enemy, to call it by its name, radical islamic terrorism.
I want to make sure I have a system that allows me to know that the platoon sergeant and platoon commander aren’t going to move at the same time when we come back from deployment. That sounds pretty simple, but it’s really about data.
I neither will aspire to nor will I accept, the position of president of the council of state and commander in chief.
No commander in chief would ever say, ‘I’m not going to listen to the guys on the ground.’
When I met Peter Weir, we did a movie called ‘Master and Commander’ together, and that’s when I really started to understand the power of acting, the power of directing, finding the emotion in performance.
In ‘Battlestar’ I’m the military and spiritual leader as well as a father. As a military commander I can treat Apollo only as I treat everyone else. At certain times, Adama has to be the commander and give the necessary orders, no matter how much it may pain him to do so.
As we used to say when I was privileged to be the commander there, Nineveh province has the most diverse human terrain in all of Iraq – Sunni Arab majority to be sure, but also Shia Arabs, numerous Kurdish communities, and they are broken out into several different political parties.
I can tell you that I never aspired to be president. I always honour something that Commander Chavez told us: that while we were in these posts, we must be clothed in humility and understand that we are here to protect the man and woman of the streets.
It wasn’t just Shia that would go to Tehran and see the commander of the Quds Force and others and the legitimate government leaders. It was also Kurdish leaders and Sunni Arabs who would even link up with Qassim Suleimani, the commander of the Quds Force – maybe not in Tehran but in Turkey or somewhere else.
It is not enough just to get your forces from A to B – you have to keep them fed and watered as they go. The art of movement, therefore, is one of the most complex and vital that any commander must master if he is going to win.
Moses was the greatest legislator and the commander in chief of perhaps the first liberation army.
The printing press is the greatest weapon in the armoury of the modern commander.
Puerto Rico’s participation per capita in the armed forces is more than most states, yet they can’t vote for their commander in chief.
I’ve been a soldier too long to refuse to entertain any request from a potential commander in chief.
As the ancient commander addressed his soldiers before battle, so should the moralist speak to men in the struggle of the era.
We need a commander in chief that speaks the truth. We will not defeat radical Islamic terrorism so long as we have a president unwilling to utter the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism’.
By rejecting the Iranian nuclear deal, Congress can help achieve the original goal of isolating the bad actors in Iran – the Ayatollah Khamenei, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, its Quds Force commander Quassem Soleimani, and the radical clerics.
I operated a periscopic TV camera so the commander, Anatoly Artsebarsky, could establish where we were heading. It is real teamwork on Soyuz.
When I hear Donald Trump say the American military is a disaster, I want to go through the screen and shake the guy. We ought to have a commander in chief who talks about our troops with respect and gratitude.
I cycled on a crew assignment as the backup commander on Apollo 16 and would have flown Apollo 19 on a return mission to the moon. However, the last few missions of the Apollo Program were canceled for budgetary reasons. So I lost my second opportunity to land on the moon.
I was very upset in August of 2012 when President Obama declared a red line against Syria and said if these chemical attacks continue, that’s it, we’re done, we’re getting involved and we did nothing. When you’re the commander in chief, the buck stops with you.
A good commander is benevolent and unconcerned with fame.
What the world needs is an Emergency Boss. An Emergency Czar. An Emergency Commander. A true Master Of Disaster. One person completely responsible for the anticipation, immediate reconnaissance, and urgent execution of rescue and relief efforts around the world.
As an A-10 squadron commander in the Air Force, I was required to be ready to deploy my 24 Warthogs and team anywhere in the world within 24 hours, including the Korean Peninsula.
When we wrote the Constitution, the intention was to give the commander in chief the authority how to use the forces when you authorize him to be able to use the forces.
The PMF should be loyal only to Iraq, not to anyone else: loyal to Iraqi official institutions, the commander in chief in the country, rather than political parties or any other force outside or inside Iraq.
I think no commander ever is going to come out and say, ‘I’m confident that we can do this.’
Any commander who fails to exceed his authority is not of much use to his subordinates.
Egotism is not a good quality. It’s not something to be admired or even tolerated. It wouldn’t be tolerated in a field commander and it shouldn’t be tolerated in a movie director.
I do think everybody pays their dues in Gilead, whether you’re the most high-up commander or not. Everybody has to face the consequences of their actions.
We cannot afford to have a president who thinks he’s some sort of global community organizer standing over America on one side and our adversaries on the other. America must have a Commander in Chief. Not a global community organizer.
I do think hubris played a role here as well, the belief that the Lusitania was too big and too fast to ever be caught by any submarine, and that, in any case, no U-boat commander would think to attack the ship because to do so would violate the long-held rules governing naval warfare against merchant shipping.
To win this war, we need a commander in chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern.
Trump makes no pretense about being the commander in chief of all of the country, being president of all of the people, including the people who voted against him. He is, in effect, a tribal chieftain who has declared war on half of the country.
Shortly after Pearl Harbor, FDR committed a most visionary act: He appointed a Harvard historian to write the official account of the U.S. Navy in World War II. Samuel Eliot Morison was given the rank of lieutenant commander, with the right to interview anyone of whatever status.
I am encouraged by the news today that United States special operations personnel found, identified and killed the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the operational commander of the al-Qaeda led insurgency in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi was the public face of the insurgency.
I’ve known Emeril for more than 20 years from when I featured him on ‘Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous’ from his days at Commander’s Palace in New Orleans and from when I helped start the Food Network where he subsequently hosted an amazing 2,000-plus shows.
When I first went to school, I was fighting all the time. The soldier mentality was still in me. I kept getting expelled. I found it hard to take instructions from anyone who wasn’t a military commander.
Without numerous schools offering hands-on opportunities, no commander will be cultivated.
But courage which goes against military expediency is stupidity, or, if it is insisted upon by a commander, irresponsibility.
