Paul Wolfowitz Quotes

So the idea that you could put Kurds, Shiite Arabs, and Sunni Arabs in a nice, liberal, federal system in Iraq in a short amount of time, six months or a year, boggles the mind.

In the Middle East, the conflict today is a matter of generations and not of cultures.

The end of the Cold War unfroze religion and ethnicity as violent forces…

Historically, the Middle East was governed by Empires. The empires drew the lines between nations without paying attention to the ethnicity of the peoples in the nations. Now, you don’t have a single country that is cohesive in the Middle East. For that reason, you see civil wars all over the place.

It is overly optimistic to think that we can take a country that has emerged from under a totalitarian regime with its institutions of civil society and create a beacon of democracy within five years. If we try to transform Iraq into a democracy, we will need more and more troops over time because we will have to quell nationalistic revolts.

In a highly diverse and fragmented society like Iraq, the military...is one of the few national institutions that stresses national unity as an important principle. Tot ear apart the army in the war’s aftermath could lead to the destruction of one of the only forces for unity within the society.

The Middle East that will emerge from the crucible of the Iraq war may not be more democratic, but it will definitely be more Shiite.

The country of Iraq is somewhat of an artificial creation going back to colonial days. And so you have the Kurds and then the Sunnis in the north predominantly and Shias in the south.

I must try desperately to absorb all information I can about the Middle East. I want to excel. I want to speak articulately about the politics of the Middle East and its religion.

Iraqi national identity under Saddam Hussein never truly incorporated Shiites or Kurds. Sunnis, who identified most closely with the Iraqi nation, remain in some ways disenfranchised relative to the other groups, or at least they perceive themselves that way.

Finland had a civil war less than 100 years ago, just like in Ireland. If you look at the history of newly independent nations, civil war is almost every time present, even in the United States.

I don't think that what's going on in Bosnia is political activity. It's partly political, but it's partly atavistic as well.

We have warned and continue to warn against calls for the division of Iraq, which come up now and then, calling for sectarian rights or minority freedoms.

We will certainly not allow the Serbian people to be taken to the slaughterhouse again. If they don't comprehend this, we have no choice but to march on Zagreb and completely annihilate the Croats.

From far away, through the sights of a sniper, they would look like Muslims, Serbs or Croats to somebody, but I approached them face to face, I saw them clearly, and trust me... They were just people..

As globalization proceeds, tribalism increases.

The Middle East conflict has become the locus of the final war between Muslims and the West

Italy, which is inhabited only by a single race speaking the same language and professing the same religion, experiences so many difficulties in its unification. For the moment all it has achieved is anarchy and disorder. Judge what would happen in Turkey if free scope were given to all the different national aspirations …. It would need a century and torrents of blood to establish even a fairly stable state of affairs.

Throughout history, countries have sought to expand ….Today, the goal of most wars is too make countries smaller rather than larger.

This is the Middle East. None of the people who were involved with this will be allowed to live.

The defining mode of conflict in the era ahead is ethnic conflict.

The main reason the Americans have come to Iraq is to put down the Shiite people—to prevent us from setting up a Shiite religious government.

If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.

I would hope that we have in place the adequate resources to become an army of occupation because you’re going to walk into chaos

Biggest risk by far is strategic and is in the post-war period. When the British took over after WWII from the Ottomans, they found themselves being assassinated from almost the first day and saw the whole area in open rebellion within a year...What do we do when small bands of fanatic Muslims start creeping across the border from Iraq, Syria, or Saudi Arabia?