"If you wait until those weapons pose a direct, clear, present danger to the United States, you've probably waited too long"
About this Quote
“If you wait…” is the kind of sentence designed to move the goalposts before anyone notices they’ve shifted. Sununu frames restraint as negligence: the only responsible timeline is preemption. By the time danger is “direct, clear, present,” he warns, the moment for action has already expired. That’s not just a policy argument; it’s a rhetorical trap. It borrows the language of legal urgency (“clear and present danger”) while quietly rewriting its threshold. In law and public debate, that phrase traditionally signals a high bar for extraordinary action. Sununu flips it into evidence of failure.
The subtext is impatience with evidentiary standards. He’s telling skeptics: if you demand proof strong enough to satisfy a courtroom, you’ll get it only after catastrophe. This is how preventive war and expansive security policy get moralized: caution becomes complicity, doubt becomes naivete. Notice the pronoun work, too. “You” recruits the listener into responsibility, implying that history will assign blame personally, not just institutionally.
Contextually, this line sits comfortably in the post-Cold War, post-9/11 logic that treated weapons programs and rogue states as problems best solved early, ideally before they crystallize into undeniable threats. It’s an argument that thrives in the fog of intelligence uncertainty, where the absence of proof can be repackaged as proof of concealment. The line works because it offers emotional clarity when facts are messy: act now, or regret later. That simplicity is the point - and the danger.
The subtext is impatience with evidentiary standards. He’s telling skeptics: if you demand proof strong enough to satisfy a courtroom, you’ll get it only after catastrophe. This is how preventive war and expansive security policy get moralized: caution becomes complicity, doubt becomes naivete. Notice the pronoun work, too. “You” recruits the listener into responsibility, implying that history will assign blame personally, not just institutionally.
Contextually, this line sits comfortably in the post-Cold War, post-9/11 logic that treated weapons programs and rogue states as problems best solved early, ideally before they crystallize into undeniable threats. It’s an argument that thrives in the fog of intelligence uncertainty, where the absence of proof can be repackaged as proof of concealment. The line works because it offers emotional clarity when facts are messy: act now, or regret later. That simplicity is the point - and the danger.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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