Bernard-Henri Levy Quotes

We have a model that we're following, and it's the Libya model.

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.

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

I am too realistic to believe in pacifism. But, nevertheless, the use of force should always be the last resort.

America is not liberal when it goes to war.

The government has decided that the same force would be employed in America as if the inhabitants were French or Spanish enemies

I know I will be severely criticized by the interventionists in America when I say we should not enter a war unless we have a reasonable chance of winning.

America's foreign policy lacks the backbone to do the right thing in Afghanistan - which is leave.

Ground troops... have to be a last resort. I think they should always be a last resort.

I think that the decision to go to war in Iraq was a mistake.

President Bush admitted that the United States went to war in Iraq based on bad intelligence. But he says knowing what we know now he would still do it again. So at least we're learning from our mistakes.

We are not interested in a proxy war. Our objective is to change Russia's behavior.

American troops and American taxpayers are shouldering a huge burden with no end in sight because Mr. Bush took us to war on false premises and with no plan to win the peace.

I think what Mr. Trump has made clear is that he would not undertake optional wars, what I have called wars of choice, a la, say Iraq in 2003 or Libya, for the purposes of transforming another country. It's not clear whether Hillary Clinton, if she were to have the opportunity, would do such a thing again or whether she would have taken a - the lesson from both Iraq and Libya that we ought not to be undertaking those kinds of wars of choice.

The idea that the United States is going to win the war in Iraq is just plain wrong.

There's a fundamental difference between many of the Democrats and my party. And that is: They want to leave before the job is completed in Iraq. Again, I repeat: These are decent people. They're just as American as I am. I just happen to strongly disagree with them. And it's very important for the American people to understand the consequences of leaving Iraq before the job is done. This is a global war on terror.

What I could not support was a dumb war, a rash war, a war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

Iraq was a war of choice, like Vietnam.

In times of war and in hours of crisis, Senator Kerry has turned his back on 'pay any price' and 'bear any burden', and he's replaced those commitments with 'wait and see' and 'cut and run'.

My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . [in] weeks rather than months.

We need to focus on killing the bad guys, not getting stuck in Middle Eastern civil wars that don't keep America safe.

Americans ... have wrought a country that has after more than two centuries yet to evidence a single year during which it was not making war upon someone, somewhere, for some reason.

I just can't vote to go to war unless I think there's a real clear-cut American purpose in the war, that we're going to win and that we're not going fight for stalemate.

[To the House of Representatives before casting the only vote against allowing George W. Bush to use 'all necesary and appropriate force' in response to 9/11:] We must be careful not to embark on an open-ended war with neither an exit strategy nor a focused target. We cannot repeat past mistakes.

Good presidents, people like George Bush, they SEND people to war. They don't bring them a rescue. This is America. We rescue insurance companies and banks.