A Republican philosophy goes something like this: If you take your car to the mechanic, and instead of fixing it, they take out the engine and charge you an arm and a leg, you should conclude that mechanics can't fix cars and you should probably just take yours to the junkyard and sell it for scrap metal.

I think there are real dangers to escalating military conflict with ISIS, and we need to be aware of them. But at the same time, you have to understand, you know, that this whole thing started with Bashar al-Assad and how he is the one who continued to escalate against the people of Syria who were trying to get democratic reform.

I understand the risks associated with being a soldier. But I think as members of Congress, we should not intensify the chance that we'll have to commit troops to a military conflict unless it's absolutely necessary to defend the nation.

One of the things that will decline over time is the demand that the society or the government bring forth a particularized racial remedy based on a history of deprivation. That will be even more difficult to do in the future.

It could be said that all armed conflicts are a ludicrous and shameful waste of lives, but World War I has a special place in the history of futility - a war without clear purpose, a war whose resolution would ultimately make the world a far worse place.

We have no control over the outcome of anything. Like the planet and global warming, we don't control that. If politicians want a war we don't control that. Acts of terrorism, we can't control them.

I guess I just always imagined that I was going to die, like, somehow on top. I was going to, like, go out in some sort of blaze of glory. I never thought about sort of fading into obscurity. And I've worked so hard at having a life, an identity, in obscurity and finding peace with that.

America's veterans and troops serving abroad today fought hard to preserve our red, white and blue, from the Revolutionary War to today's Global War Against Terrorism, and Congress' action today is appropriate for one of our most sacred symbols.