Limited government is best.
— Erik Prince
I'm a strong supporter of the military.
Any time you employ thousands of people, some people do dumb things.
We have done great work for the U.S. government.
We have no George Pattons anymore. We have no Ulysses S. Grants. We have none of the swashbuckling generals that actually made things happen.
We have a great all-volunteer force, but the fact is that 0.5% of the U.S. population serves in the military, maybe another 3-5% knows someone who serves. Leaving 95% of Ameria with no real contact with the military.
I'm a very free market guy.
I am a businessman, not a politician, but I am also a proud American who would never do anything against my country's national interest.
Why should I pay for business? Fly coach, you arrive at the same time.
Entrepreneurship made America great.
America is a great nation, but it cannot spend blood and treasure endlessly.
We now know that gun-free zones, though well intentioned, do not prevent attacks.
Readiness is an oft-mentioned - but frequently ignored - necessity.
Troops fighting for their lives should not have to ask a lawyer sitting in air conditioning 500 miles away for permission to drop a bomb.
Every individual who has worked for Blackwater in Iraq has previously served in the U.S. military or as a police officer. Many were highly decorated. And from the beginning, these individuals have been bound by detailed contracts that ensure intensive government direction and control.
When someone needs copper, or wood or an ag product, and they invest capital somewhere to make that happen, and people get jobs from that, and that good gets introduced to the world stage and it gets traded and moved, the whole world benefits.
I would rather deal with the vagaries of investing in Africa than in figuring out what the hell else Washington is going to do to the entrepreneur next.
I'm a pretty stubborn guy. I don't quit too easily.
I've done dumb things.
The Janjaweed is a truly unfettered bully. No one has stood up to them. If they were met by a mobile quick reaction force of African Union soldiers, the Janjaweed would quickly learn their habits were not sustainable.
Any systems can always be made better.
We have the finest officers in the world, but it seems like once they become generals it is a self-licking ice cream cone of who gets promoted and who gets approved to join that club. No one thinks outside the box.
President Trump should appoint a special presidential envoy and empower them to wage an unconventional war against Taliban and Daesh forces, to hold the corrupt officials accountable and to negotiate with their Afghan counterparts and the Afghan Taliban that are willing to reconcile with Kabul.
If someone is doing that, saving the customer money, is making a profit so bad?
I'm painted as this war profiteer by Congress. Meanwhile I'm paying for all sorts of intelligence activities to support American national security, out of my own pocket.
I put myself and my company at the C.I.A.'s disposal for some very risky missions. But when it became politically expedient to do so, someone threw me under the bus.
Russia is basically Italy with nuclear weapons.
After 9/11, a few hundred CIA and Special Operations personnel, backed by airpower and Afghan militias, devastated Taliban and al-Qaeda forces. That effort has since turned into a conventional Pentagon nation-building exercise and gone backward.
We protect our banks, hospitals and airports with armed personnel; surely, we can do more to protect schools, which teach our nation's most valuable resource.
Our failed population-centric approach to Afghanistan has only led to missed opportunities, which is why Afghanistan depends on donors for 90% of government revenues. A smarter, trade-centric approach will boost Afghanistan's long-run viability by weaning it off donor welfare dependency.
Afghanistan is an expensive disaster for America.
Very few people know someone who would voluntarily go into a war zone to protect a person he has never met. I know 1,000 of them, and I am proud that they are part of our team.
Developing good investments in Africa is by and large the best for the people of Africa that have a job, that have electricity, that might have clean water, that might have those things that we in the West take horribly for granted.
When the United States first went into Afghanistan in 2001, it devastated the Taliban and Al Qaeda in a matter of weeks using only a few hundred C.I.A. and Special Operations personnel, backed by American air power. Later, when the United States transitioned to conventional Pentagon stability operations, this success was reversed.
I'm a business guy just trying to make - provide great services to the customers that need us.
For people to mischaracterize my time or ownership of Blackwater as being some great financial bonanza, it was not. It was most definitely not.
We're trying to do for the national security apparatus what FedEx did for the postal service.
The people we helped in the field, they know what the legacy is. The 40% or so of Americans that really can't stand the name of Blackwater, that's fine, I'll never really win them over anyway. And I really don't care.
Everyone says they support our troops and thank you for their service, if they really want to support their troops, demand better. Demand that their sacrifice not be wasted. That we not just muddle along as some of the generals have called for.
I'm not a huge believer that government provides a whole lot of solutions.
There are some phone calls where it's not even worth wasting the electrons on.
I've been overtly and covertly serving America since I started in the armed services.
We need to privatize whenever possible.
The failings in Afghanistan don't fall on the shoulders of the American service personnel trying to complete their mission. The failure falls on military leadership unable to adapt to irregular warfare, and a Congress that blindly continues to fund failure.
Like Vietnam, Afghanistan was never about troop levels; it is about how troops are utilized.
Our nation has endured and flourished because people of goodwill adapt and innovate productive solutions to our nation's problems - not because of top-down dictates.
In Afghanistan, the viceroy approach would reduce rampant fraud by focusing spending on initiatives that further the central strategy, rather than handing cash to every outstretched hand from a U.S. system bereft of institutional memory.
In Iraq, State Department civilians and U.S. soldiers have been operating in the same location in an active war zone. While the troops have been facing insurgents, the State Department civilians have been working to rebuild institutions and infrastructure. Blackwater's role in this war evolved from this unprecedented dynamic.
Since United States military operations in Iraq began in 2003, I have visited Iraq at least 15 times. But unlike politicians who visit, the question for me has never been why the U.S. got into Iraq. Instead, as the CEO of Blackwater, the urgent question was how the company I head could perform the duties asked of us by the U.S. State Department.
It's amazing how many countries run their embassies as commercial outposts to promote businessmen from their country.
