Dana Perino Quotes

Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.

We're in an illusion about what our role is in world politics and foreign affairs, and our policies are killing and destroying and doing a lot of things that we are not aware of.

I started, actually, as an analyst on African affairs, mainly on Al Jazeera. I remember the first few series were about Saudi students, and the negotiations between the government and the Sudanese rebels in the south. And then, slowly, I was speaking about Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and a few other places.

What I'm trying to do, and my policy, is to disassociate, to shy away from what's going on in Syria.

The Obama foreign policy, in broad strokes, has been a disaster.

There is every prospect that events arising out of our growing foreign investment will present us in the future with decisions involving war and peace, will bring us, whether we like it or not, to concern ourselves with distant causes.

I have carried bills concerning Sudan. I've carried bills concerning Congo. I've carried bills concerning North Korea and Iran and Iraq.

I think there is a failure in foreign policy. And you have to acknowledge that under Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton was the architect of that foreign policy. Whether it was malevolent or not, I don't know.

In addition to deep divisions on issues such as trade, climate change, Middle East peace and nuclear weapons, Trump's attacks on leaders such as Trudeau and Merkel and disrespect for NATO and other institutions are prompting a reassessment by allied governments and publics.

The world is a mess, and while there is no simple pill America can administer to fix things, what we know is that there is significant room for progressives to articulate a foreign policy vision that is truly our own.

Our 21st-century world is an incredibly dangerous one. Between brutal civil wars, violent extremism, spreading autocracy, rising inequality, territorial expansionism, election interference, and nuclear proliferation, our policymakers have their hands full.

When you decide to get involved in a military operation in a place like Syria, you've got to be prepared, as we learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, to become the government, and I'm not sure any country, either the United States or I don't hear of anyone else, who's willing to take on that responsibility.

If there is one lesson for U.S. foreign policy from the past 10 years, it is surely that military intervention can seem simple but is in fact a complex affair with the potential for unintended consequences.

I have never believed you go to war in Iraq, you go to war in Afghanistan, and believe that you can deal with those battlefields, those countries, in microcosms, or narrow channels.

As the U.S., the world is questioning why not end it, and so if, in fact, we were to pull out, the world would definitely question why we did this to begin with. But I still believe the world would call upon us for help if they needed it.

I certainly don't like a label that suggests I believe that the military is the solution to most of the world's problems.

I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq. Those who want to come and help are welcome. Those who come to interfere and destroy are not.

Looking back over my more than a half century in intelligence, I have not experienced a time when we've been beset by more crises and threats around the globe.

A political society does not live to conduct foreign policy; it would be more correct to say that it conducts foreign policy in order to live.

Historians in the future will surely wonder what went so wrong when the United States, for the first time ever, focused its foreign policy on the Islamic world.

There are, however, cases in which, while our own interests are not greatly involved, strong appeal is made to our sympathies.... in extreme cases action may be justifiable and proper. What form the action shall take must depend upon the circumstances of the case; that is, upon the degree of the atrocity and upon our power to remedy it.

Every foreign policy has to have a moral purpose.

The Marietta is not in Honduran waters on banana police duty, but to exert a moral influence toward political tranquillity.

If I were President I would veto arms sales to countries we damn well know our going to shoot our ass the minute our backs are turned.

The United States can't go in and impose order on chaos every place in the world.