Mitt Romney Quotes

There are a growing number of conservatives and Republicans who, while they support the president and support the war in Iraq, wonder how many of these nation-building wars we're going to engage in and what the parameters of that are.

I support the current operational position and tactics in Iraq, but we’re in a bad place, we didn’t need to be there, and we shouldn’t do it again.

Any future Defense Secretary who advises the President to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined.

I watched the Bush administration overreact to the Clinton administration, who believed they did too much nation building, sustaining other countries, and that's why we never put the commitment on Afghanistan and Iraq that should have been in there under their policy leadership.

Senator Clinton is very knowledgeable about national security and is probably going to be strong on defense. I have no doubts whatsoever that if she were president in January '09, she would not act irresponsibly and issue orders to conduct an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, regardless of the consequences, and squander the gains that have been made.

[Barack Obama] is sending more troops [to Afghanistan], but they have also realized that we are not going to win that war through guns and tanks. We have to engage the neighbors, and it is good that there is a non-military strategy in addition to a military strategy. It is, at least, encouraging. Whether it will work or not, the jury is still put.

President Barack Obama started by accepting the military's counterinsurgency, but came out of Afghanistan having decided that counterinsurgency actually doesn't work.

We've made some mistakes in this country in times past - the Korean conflict proceeding that, some say proceeding the Persian Gulf War, where we were ambiguous as to what we would do.

War on terrorism defines the central preoccupation of the United States in the world today, and it does reflect in my view a rather narrow and extremist vision of foreign policy of the world's first superpower, of a great democracy, with genuinely idealistic traditions.

American presence is, you know, the major cause of balance of power and the stability in this region.

So I think that our foreign policy, the president's strong and principled leadership when it comes to the war against terror and foreign policy is going to be an asset.

I believe in a strong national defense. But it's my belief that neither Iraq nor Afghanistan poses a threat to national security, and we shouldn't be involved in either area.

The doctrine of preemption has a long and distinguished history in the history of American foreign policy.

I used to have a little saying I used when people said, 'What are your priorities?' I'd give them a bit of government alphabet soup. I'd say 'CTCPROW: Counterterrorism, counterproliferation, rest of the world.'

President Bush spent last night calling world leaders to support the war with Iraq and it is sad when the most powerful man on earth is yelling, 'I know you're there, pick up, pick up.

One of the lessons of Vietnam, which we failed to heed in the Iraq war and the Afghanistan surge, is that before you commit U.S. military forces to aid or assist, it is essential to know what you want them to achieve.

Our safety requires a long-term military presence in the Middle East because that's where the plans to attack us are emanating.

The Pentagon is always going to be the last to want to intervene. It is up to the civilians to tell us what they want to do and we’ll figure out how to do it.

I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders. I believe the role of the military is to fight and win war and therefore prevent war from happening in the first place

I’d rather build highways here then try nation building in Iraq

By invading Iraq, the President has undermined the War on Terrorism.

America’s military bases around the world are centers of stability in unstable regions.

For nearly 7 decades United States has been the anchor of global security. This is meant more than forging international agreements. It has meant enforcing them.

Moscow believes that using force constitutes strategic defense.

The war in Afghanistan is not of a peace with the rest of Obama's worldview. It's a holdover from the era that his election was supposed to bring to a close.