Rick Renzi Quotes

We must have a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. forces - or at the very least a plan for it - something the administration has incredulously failed to do for over two years.

I believe sincerely that we should bring in U.N. peacekeepers and bring our troops home.

We can stay in Afghanistan and stabilize the situation, or we can get out and win, or we can get out and lose.

I don't think we would have had to be an occupying power if we had done the right thing in 1991.

I applaud President Obama's decision to begin a partial withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan. However, I believe that we must go further and have a full withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops.

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.

This nation's elected leaders owe all Americans the duty of formulating an Iraqi policy based on sound analysis of the actual facts.

War is too serious a matter to leave to soldiers.

As proud and capable as it is, I think the idea that the military can build new countries is a tall order, and it's the sort of thing that we would only expect from a military that we have superresourced and thought of as supercapable.

The big risk to British lives in 2013 is in Afghanistan. Our troops, diplomats and aid workers have made a big contribution there. But while there is an end date for Western engagement, 2014, there isn't a proper end game.

It's not the job of the U.S. military to do nation-building or produce democratic utopias.

I saw the president make the tough calls in the Situation Room - and today, our troops in Iraq have finally come home so America can do some nation building here at home. That was the change that we believed in. That was the change we fought for. That was the change President Obama delivered.

I believe very deeply in the proposition that what we did in Iraq was the right thing to do. It was hard to do. It took a long time. There were significant costs involved.

I thought Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time and have been fighting to get the Administration to stop its failed policy and bring our troops home.

Our soldiers have done a valiant effort in fighting terrorism and bringing a semblance of law and order to the chaos in the region and it would be shortsighted to lay out a specific timetable to bring U.S. troops home prematurely before their mission is accomplished.

I want the troops from Great Britain and the U.S. to be successful, but by the same token, Afghanistan has always been a screw-up.

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.

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.

Regime change cannot be the objective of military action.

It is our moral duty to intervene today, straight away, to help the Iraqi people in their difficulty. Iraq has to be given back to the Iraqi people

There are two things that will always be difficult for a democratic people to do: to start a war and to finish it

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

We don't have the temperament to be an occupying power.

[The Kosovo intervention] would set a dangerous precedent to commit our troops to fighting civil wars for independence in every corner of the world.

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