Politics & Power Quote by Bob Inglis

It’s the kind of sentence that tries to sound like sober duty while quietly laundering a whole theory of war into bureaucratic cadence. Inglis stacks verbs - “convert, capture or kill” - like a menu of options, an all-purpose moral alibi. “Convert” gives the line a civilizing gloss (as if counterterrorism were also a self-help seminar), “capture” nods toward legality, and “kill” lands as the inevitable backstop. The rhetorical trick is the sequencing: the softest word comes first, letting the hardest one feel like a regrettable necessity rather than the point.

The phrase “every conceivable way” is maximalist on purpose. It shuts down debate by framing limits as negligence. “Tools” does similar work; it’s techy, managerial language that makes violence sound like logistics. No one argues against giving soldiers “tools,” the way they might argue about escalation, civilian casualties, or mission creep.

Then comes the tell: “the time to equip the Iraqi security forces.” This plants the classic Iraq War promise that the occupation is temporary because an indigenous force is just one training cycle away from taking over. “Time” becomes the solvent that dissolves accountability: if things aren’t improving, the answer is always more time, which really means more funding, more authority, more latitude.

Context matters. In the mid-2000s, “support the troops” rhetoric was often deployed to preempt criticism of the war itself. Inglis is speaking to Congress, but also past it, aiming at constituents who want reassurance that force can be both decisive and clean. The subtext: the mission is righteous, the methods are flexible, and the exit is always on the horizon.