Charles Krauthammer Quotes

I think the greatest threat to the privacy of Americans is the drone, and the use of the drone and the very few regulations that are on it today.

Terrorism has replaced Communism as the rationale for the militarization of the country [America], for military adventures abroad, and for the suppression of civil liberties at home. It serves the same purpose, serving to create hysteria.

As a nation, we have been responsible for the murder of literally hundreds of thousands of people at home and abroad by fighting a war that should never have been started and can be won, if at all, only by converting the United States into a police state.

The war in Iraq has been extremely divisive here at home, and has also divided the world community.

The war in Iraq will end, our troops will come home, Bush will be impeached and he will be brought to justice.

Few people know that President Obama has used drone attacks many times more than Bush ever did. Obama's off the charts in terms of drone attack.

If there's another 9/11 or a major war in the Middle-East involving a U.S. attack on Iran, I have no doubt that there will be, the day after or within days an equivalent of a Reichstag fire decree that will involve massive detentions in this country.

The Air Force has it far worse than the Navy in terms of existential fears, primarily due to the rapid rise and unbelievable dissemination of drones, where seemingly now every military unit has their own miniature air wing of what would have recently passed as toys.

The use of drones is rapidly transforming the way we go to war. On the battlefield, a squad leader can receive real-time data from a drone that enables him to view the landscape for miles in every direction, dramatically expanding the capabilities of what would normally have been a small and isolated unit.

I call it the 'House of Reprehensibles.' We don't have any real political resistance to this growth of the domestic state across the board. So I'm much more focused on that than on the Patriot Act, which is a real effort, however inept, to deal with a real problem.

Outside the context of armed conflict, the use of drones for targeted killings is almost never likely to be legal.

Drones are not going to solve the problem alone but they are part of the package.

I think the reason that drones have become so controversial is because they're used in Pakistan; they're used in Yemen; they've been used in all kinds of places.

A drone isn't any different than a bomb; it's not any different than other weapons that are used, where there is always a capacity for people to be killed who you wished were not. It's just the weapons platform.

Drones are just another weapon, and they turn out to be a very effective weapon that puts no American troops at risk, and I don't see why we shouldn't use them against identified enemy targets.

We have institutionalized a drone program where the oversight is almost completely internalized.

The drones are really interesting - how have the troops withdrawn from Afghanistan? Because we've upped the drone strikes and most of the country doesn't even really know what that means or who we're killing or... it's such a new weapon that we don't know what the long term impacts of that kind of military action is going to be.

The fetters imposed on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers from abroad.

I believe that when [senator Ron] Wyden and [senator Mark] Udall asked about the scale of this, they [the NSA] said it did not have the tools to provide an answer. We do have the tools and I have maps showing where people have been scrutinised most. We collect more digital communications from America than we do from the Russians.

We say that if America has entered the war to make the world safe for democracy, she must first make democracy safe in America. How else is the world to take America seriously, when democracy at home is daily being outraged, free speech suppressed, peaceable assemblies broken up by overbearing and brutal gangsters in uniform; when free press is curtailed and every independent opinion gagged? Verily, poor as we are in democracy, how can we give of it to the world?

The president and other government officials denounce school violence, yet still advocate for endless undeclared wars abroad and easy abortion at home. U.S. drone strikes kill thousands, but nobody in America holds vigils or devotes much news coverage to those victims, many of which are children, albeit, of a different color.

Trusting the government to monitor your calls without listening. It's kind of like trusting Chris Christie to pick up the McDonald's and not eat the fries on the way home.

American soldiers [are] going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the ñ of ñ the historical customs, religious customs.

Hard to remember who is more dangerous: the people who are attacking our liberties overseas, or those who are suppressing them at home.

All of that was very closely researched. I think all we can do with drones is realize they are with us and not bury our heads in the sand about it, we should say, 'Okay, how do we regulate this?'