Although combat operations unseated the Taliban and the Saddam Hussein regime, a poor understanding of the recent histories of the Afghan and Iraqi peoples undermined efforts to consolidate early battlefield gains into lasting security.

The key thing about force protection is... if you focus too much on force protection, and you disengage yourself from the community, you're putting yourself at greater risk because you need to interact with the community in a positive way to gain the intelligence you need.

You have to keep listening and thinking and being critical and self-critical. Remember General Nivelle, in the First World War, at Verdun? He said he had the solution and then destroyed the French Army until it mutinied.

There are two ways to fight the United States military: asymmetrically and stupid. Asymmetrically means you're going to try to avoid our strengths. In the 1991 Gulf War, it's like we called Saddam's army out into the schoolyard and beat up that army.

Death by starvation is slow.

Death is always a reality, and life is incredibly short.

When I'm 100 years old, if I make it that long, when I die, probably the first tag line will be John McCain's daughter, and I'm so proud of him and proud of my family's legacy and our life, so I don't have a problem with it.

The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it.