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The American people and the American military will never get used to civilian casualties. And we will - we will fight against that every way we can possibly bring our intelligence and our tactics to bear. We're not the perfect guys, but we are the good guys.

James Mattis

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More quotes by James Mattis

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ISIS is a threat to all civilized nations. America's intention is that the foreign fighters do not survive the fight to return home to North Africa, to Europe, to America, to Asia, to Africa. We're not going to allow them to do so. We're going to stop them there and take apart the caliphate.
James Mattis
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I think the core problem is much closer to recognizing where force is of value, where it is useful, and to distinguish that from situations in which war is not useful or is indeed counterproductive.
James Mattis
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Fight with a happy heart and strong spirit.
James Mattis
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Treachery has existed as long as there's been warfare, and there's always been a few people that you couldn't trust.
James Mattis
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I would consider the principal threats to start with Russia, and it would certainly include any nations that are looking to intimidate nations around their periphery, regional nations nearby them, whether it be with weapons of mass destruction or, I would call it, unusual, unorthodox means of intimidating them, that sort of thing.
James Mattis
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What would you do differently as defense secretary to compensate for this record in which the greatest military in the world, as we are constantly told, doesn't get the job done?
James Mattis
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Yousef Aid Ahmed has memorized the places where his four brothers' bodies laid after they were killed by US marines, he said. The family recounts that November day in 2005 and says it was a massacre of the brothers, along with 20 other people, following a roadside bomb in Haditha.
James Mattis
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Our strategy right now is to accelerate the campaign against ISIS. It is a threat to all civilized nations.
James Mattis
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Find the enemy that wants to end this experiment (in American democracy) and kill every one of them until they're so sick of the killing that they leave us and our freedoms intact.
James Mattis
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There are some people who think you have to hate them in order to shoot them. I don't think you do. It's just business.
James Mattis
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In a country with millions of people & cars going everywhere, the enemy is going to get a car bomb out there once in a while.
James Mattis
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It is mostly a matter of wills. Whose will is going to break first? Ours or the enemy's?
James Mattis
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Since 9/11 we've been engaged in wars around the world, and General [James] Mattis has been a leading battlefield commander in many of those theaters, including in the April 2004 siege of Fallujah, where the US Marines killed so many people that the municipal soccer stadium in the city had to be turned into a graveyard for the dead.
James Mattis
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You are part of the world's most feared and trusted force. Engage your brain before you engage your weapon.
James Mattis
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You've been told that you're broken. That you're damaged goods ... there is also Post-Traumatic Growth. You come back from war stronger and more sure of who you are.
James Mattis
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PowerPoint makes us stupid.
James Mattis
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I was struck by the fact that none of the senators, basically, asked General [James] Mattis, Well, General, how is it that we haven't won? We haven't won anywhere, 'winning' in the sense of conclusively achieving our political objectives, however you might want to define those objectives.
James Mattis
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If in order to kill the enemy you have to kill an innocent, don't take the shot. Don't create more enemies than you take out by some immoral act.
James Mattis
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The first time you blow someone away is not an insignificant event.
James Mattis
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I think, broadly speaking, the US military's role - US military activism in various parts of the Islamic world over the past several decades has been counterproductive.
James Mattis