George W. Bush Quotes

Be tough, hold a tough line, but don't be running off into another war, especially since even if you support our troops and you want to have a robust foreign policy, you recognize that we have - we have been overdeploying our men and women, and we have been spilling our blood and treasure, and we need to be more careful.

The administration does not agree with those who suggest we should deploy hundreds of thousands of American troops to engage militarily in a ground war in Iraq.

I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation building.

I'm going to vote in support of the president of the United States in keeping the troops in Iraq until the president and our military is convinced that the mission is complete.

Well, let's assume the world is linear. If we required a certain amount of troops per 25,000 population in the Balkans, if the world is not radically different, something of the same extent is going to be needed in Iraq.

As we've seen, deploying large armies abroad won't always be our best offense. Countries typically don't want foreign soldiers in their cities and towns.

I think a submarine is a very worthwhile weapon. I believe we can defend ourselves with submarines and all our troops back at home. This whole idea that we have to be in 130 countries and 900 bases... is an old-fashioned idea.

I’d rather build highways here then try nation building in Iraq

I don’t think our troops ought to be used for what’s called nation-building. I think our troops ought to be used to fight and win war.

I watched the Bush administration overreact to the Clinton administration, who believed they did too much nation building, sustaining other countries, and that's why we never put the commitment on Afghanistan and Iraq that should have been in there under their policy leadership.

It's expensive to police the world.

Now Republicans are a more interventionist party than they have been at any time since George W. Bush left office.

Barack Obama has done something I find very hard to understand. Ever since FDR, we've had the capacity to be engaged in two conflicts at once, and he's saying, No, we're going to cut that back to only one conflict.

You have to decide in advance whether you're ready go to war. If you guys are ready to send a million troops into Ukraine and fight World War III, you're going to do it without my support because I think that's a really foolish notion.

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

I would have troops where they’re wanted, in our bases in Kuwait. I would have a contingency in case of an international terrorist attack. Our involvement in Iraq has led us to fail to focus on the true threat, al-Qaeda in Afghanistan... It was a mistake.

I think the President ought to bring everybody that's in American uniform back because we're headed for war.

John McCain is the guy that has advocated for war everywhere. He would bankrupt the nation.

The mistakes of the Iraq war are not only tactical and strategic, but historical. It is essentially a war of colonialism, attempted in the post-colonial age.

The foreign policy, you have to know how to pick and choose. There's no way, if Saddam [Hussein] had not had weapons of mass destruction, I would have gone, because I don't believe that the U.S. should be involved directly in civil wars.

The problem with the war in Iraq is not so much the intelligence as the stupidity.

[The Republicans] looked at basically the failed wars and they said, oh, this, us being the policeman of the world, that is not working.

I think the American people should know there's already strong influences toward another deployment of American troops in an open-ended commitment.

We cannot continue to be a policeman for the rest of the world.

When it comes to the war in Iraq, the time for promises and assurances for waiting and for patience is over. Too many lives have been lost, too many billions of dollars have been spent for us to trust the president on another tired and failed policy that's opposed by generals and experts, Democrats and Republicans, Americans and many of the Iraqis themselves.