Justice & Law Quote by Tom Daschle

The genius of this line is how it turns escalation into a housekeeping chore. “Exhausted” does a lot of laundering: it implies patience, diligence, even moral fatigue, as if war is the reluctant last step after every reasonable door has been knocked on. Daschle isn’t just making a case for military action; he’s building an alibi for it, a narrative in which force becomes the only remaining adult option.

The phrasing also smuggles in a subtle transfer of agency. “We have got to force them to comply” casts the United States less as an actor choosing violence and more as an enforcer compelled by someone else’s misbehavior. “Their own agreements” is prosecutorial language: Iraq isn’t merely defiant, it’s in breach of contract. Pair that with “international law” and the claim is clear - this isn’t a geopolitical choice, it’s a rules-based intervention. The moral frame is compliance, not conquest; procedure, not power.

Context matters: this is late-1990s Washington, when Iraq was the bipartisan test case for post-Cold War credibility and the UN inspection regime was both a tool and a talking point. Daschle, a Democratic leader navigating a hawkish center and a wary base, reaches for a careful triangulation: affirm diplomacy, invoke law, then normalize military action as enforcement. The subtext: if the US doesn’t strike, it isn’t restrained - it’s weak, and weakness invites disorder.