There are some phone calls where it's not even worth wasting the electrons on.

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.

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've been overtly and covertly serving America since I started in the armed services.

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.

We need to privatize whenever possible.

Russia is basically Italy with nuclear weapons.

America is a great nation, but it cannot spend blood and treasure endlessly.

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.

Like Vietnam, Afghanistan was never about troop levels; it is about how troops are utilized.

We now know that gun-free zones, though well intentioned, do not prevent attacks.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I never intended to be a defense contractor in the first place.

Afghanistan is an expensive disaster for America.

I live in Loudoun County, and the counties surrounding Washington, D.C., have the highest per-capita income in the country. Not because they create wealth, but because they suck wealth from the rest of the country, and that system needs to be shaken up.

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.

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.

The left wants to protect social programs, the right wants to protect defense and intelligence spending and all the rest. I say the defense and intelligence world will be better off with a smaller budget. They would be less encumbered by bloat and able to maneuver the way they used to be able and not trip over themselves.