War & Peace Quote by John M. McHugh

Technocracy is never more dangerous than when it slips the word "importantly" into a sentence that quietly expands the machinery of war. John M. McHugh’s line - issued in the antiseptic dialect of hearings, memos, and budget justifications - is doing two jobs at once: it sounds like prudent stewardship while smuggling in a major political decision. "We also" signals consensus and continuity, as if the conclusion is simply the next bullet point in an already-set agenda. "Very importantly" preemptively scolds dissent; if you disagree, you’re not just wrong, you’re irresponsible. The verb "recommend" is a classic Washington hedge, diffusing agency across committees and processes, even as it points the ship in a clear direction.

The real payload is "continued growth" in "end strength", a term designed to make troop levels feel like a spreadsheet variable rather than human bodies. "End strength" sanitizes the stakes: deployments, rotations, trauma, the long tail of veterans’ care, and the political temptation to treat manpower as a substitute for strategy. Naming the Army and Marine Corps specifically hints at the post-9/11 era logic of counterinsurgency and prolonged ground commitments: wars that don’t end with a surrender ceremony, but with indefinite force management.

McHugh, a politician operating in defense-policy space, is calibrating reassurance. The sentence courts hawks by promising capacity, reassures centrists by presenting expansion as measured and managerial, and pressures opponents by framing growth as the responsible default. It’s the rhetoric of inevitability: not "Should we", but "We recommend continued". The subtext is blunt: the missions will persist, so the institution must enlarge to absorb them.