Elliott Abrams Quotes

My father, the political dissident Jaballa Matar, disappeared from his home in Cairo in March 1990.

I was forced to come into politics because Saakashvili had destroyed the opposition. I had a choice either to leave the country, because it was dangerous to live here, or to go into politics.

Nobody wants a political prisoner, but a political emigrant is no problem.

Confidentially the State Department is in a bind. Our task would be simple if the reports of the atrocities could be declared untrue or even exaggerated but the evidence, alas, is irrefutable and the Secretary of State wants to avoid giving the impression that while the United States is willing to intervene actively to protect its commercial interests, it is not willing to move on behalf of the Christian minorities.

I never thought about becoming a politician. But during the military dictatorship, my grandfather was put in prison six times and my father twice. If my family and my country didn't have this history, I might be a professor somewhere today.

In Honduras, in particular, Hillary Clinton as Obama's secretary of state was instrumental in legitimizing the coup's subsequent death-squad regime.

As far back as Iran's aborted 'Green Revolution' in 2009, Obama's supplications to Iran's ruling theocracy have amounted to diplomatic shivs in the backs of Iran's youthful democratic insurrectionists, mash notes written directly to Khomeinist supremo Ali Khamenei and the scuttling of programs documenting the regime's human rights outrages.

A celebrated and hugely popular actress in her native Iran, Ahangarani first landed on the radar of the Iranian authorities for her open support of opposition figure Mir-Hossein Mousavi, which led to her arrest in July 2009 in the aftermath of a disputed presidential election in Iran.

In Syria, while secretary of state, Clinton watched as United Nations resolution after U.N. resolution failed. She accomplished nothing except to repeat the refrain, 'Assad must go.'

In Canada, the U.S. and most of Europe it may be easy to take political stands, this is something for which you can be forced to pay with your life, or your freedom, in many other parts of the world, from Iran to Russia to Pakistan to China.

There's one place where (Fidel Castro’s) Cuba stands out head and shoulders above the rest – that is in its love for human rights and liberty!

The treatment of Japanese in America is so grave that it may endanger our international relations and welfare.

In recent years, we have seen the United States back away from pressuring the Castro regime, under the misguided view that placating them with an open hand would yield progress. That naivete has invited only more cruelty and oppression in return.

Don't blame America for the thousands of Cubans who have been arrested, detained, and imprisoned by Castro for peacefully protesting the regime.

In February 2004, the two traditional torturers of Haiti - France and the United States - combined to back a military coup and send President Aristide off to Africa. The U.S. denies him permission to return to the entire region.

I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression.

When I became secretary of state, I felt one of my primary jobs was building relationships around the world.

Caceres was a vocal and brave indigenous leader, an opponent of the 2009 Honduran coup that Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, made possible.

I will not ascribe to the 'Blame America' club for vicious abuses of human rights, systemic exploitation of Cuban labor, unrelenting repression, and stifling censorship.

The centerpiece of the Bush administration's case for going to war in Iraq was Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the U.N. Security Council on February 5, 2003, six weeks before the invasion.

Political leaders in Belarus are routinely repressed, and their voices are muffled: Tsikhanouskaya was running for president because her husband, Siarhei Tsikhanouski, was arrested before he could start his own presidential campaign.

For many Mexican human rights defenders, confronting the military does not end so well.

The U.S. Embassy in Havana may be reopened, but outside its gates, an open society with more freedom for its people is still absent.

Despite egregious human rights abuses, military dictatorship in Greece, and Russian atrocities in Chechnya, no state has ever been voted out of the Council of Europe.

Xi has made plain that he will no longer tolerate hearing the words 'human rights' spoken out loud in the same sentence with the word 'China.'