Donald Trump Quotes

Bad things usually don't happen by themselves in Iraq.

You just have to come to grips with the fact that people don't like to be invaded or bombed by anybody. And America has been engaged in that.

Iraq is not about oil.

We cannot undo the past in this misguided war in Iraq.

As many people have chronicled, the decision to fight in Vietnam was a years-long accretion of step-by-step choices, each of which could be rationalized at the time. Invading Iraq was an unforced, unnecessary decision to risk everything on a 'war of choice' whose costs we are still paying.

It will no longer be war that is the continuation of politics by other means, it will be what I have dubbed 'the integral accident' that is the continuation of politics by other means.

War is always a very blunt instrument and almost always produces uncertain results.

If Americans are entitled to hit Iraq unilaterally, then why isn't Russia entitled to the same with respect to Georgia? Why is China not entitled to the same with respect to some other neighboring country which, according to Chinese views, may be supporting insurrection in Tibet or Shenyang? Why, say, India is not entitled to hit Pakistan, which openly supports terrorists in Kashmir and which has nuclear weapons, and which has a very fragile domestic situation under which fundamentalists any day can come to power

When you start a military intervention, you do not know what will happen even in the next hour

Iraq is a terrible place. Some fool American is going to come out here and try to redesign it

On whatever side we regard the history of Europe, we shall perceive it to be a tissue of crimes, follies, and misfortunes, of politics without design, and wars without consequence.

Failed states have become breeding grounds for conflict.

I do think that I have a better sense of how military action can result in unintended consequences.

There are some similarities, of course (between Iraq and Vietnam). Death is terrible.

In war trivial causes produce momentous events.

To make war upon rebellion is messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife.

Because of empathy, stories of the suffering of one person could lead us into a war that could kill millions of people.

The United States of America is engaged in a war against an extremist group of folks.

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.

During my lifetime, America has been constantly waging war against much of humanity: impoverished people mostly, in stricken places.

I think the behavior of the troops has been a huge factor in the rise of the insurgency and in the rise of the anti-American feelings there[in Iraq].

America roused to a righteous anger has always been a force for good. States that have been supporting if not Osama bin Laden, people like him need to feel pain. If we flatten part of Damascus or Tehran or whatever it takes, that is part of the solution.

The kind of problem that America faces in Iraq is a little bit the kind of problem that Israel faced in dealing with Hezbollah. If the conflict, the theater of conflict enlarges, it's going to become more and more absorbing and more and more costly.

The war in Iraq, specifically America's role of leadership in this war, is a painful invitation to ask ourselves what, if anything, we've learned from previous wars. I am revolted by the brutal killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent people during any war. And I'm saddened by the apparent inability of human beings to find less violent solutions to conflict and terrorism.

They [politicians] have defined the war simply in terms of the detonation of explosives. When you look at the broader picture, America is mired in two wars that we're losing at the moment. We have a political environment that is as poisonous as anything I've seen, at least since the end of Vietnam.