The quote is from Iron Man. And I agree with it.
On the validity of this quote, someone on Quora quoted what APJ Abdul Kalam said:
“If you want peace, prepare for war.”
The quote was originally from Roman Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus. But the saying existed even before that.
But someone replied to the answer saying that:
Except, after you have prepared for war you get people like Madelline Allbright saying “What’s the point of having these great armed forces if we can’t use them?“.
If you prepare for war, in the end what you often get is what you prepared for… war.
But I disagree with it. The question would only come from an ill-informed person. I made a reply to this reply, but turns out the general to whom Madelline Allbright asked this question, General Powell, also made the same reply to her, as any sensible person would.
The context of Madelline Allbright’s quote was:
As Powell tells it, “The debate exploded at one session when Madeleine Albright, our ambassador to the UN, asked me in frustration, ‘What’s the point of of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?’”
Powell’s response to this display of petulance was classic: “I thought I would have an aneurysm. American GIs were not toy soldiers to be moved around on some sort global game board. I patiently explained that we had used our armed forces more than two dozen times in the preceding three years for war, peacekeeping, disaster relief, and humanitarian assistance. But in every one of those cases we had a clear goal and had matched our military commitment to the goal. As a result, we had been successful in every case. I told Ambassador Albright that the U.S. military would carry out any mission it was handed, but my advice would always be that the tough policy goals had to be set first. Then we would accomplish the mission.
This was what would later be called the “Powell Doctrine” and it makes good sense to this day.