Victor Davis Hanson Quotes

I don’t think that Americans should die to make Iraq free. What are we going to do? Have these endless wars of altruism?

Right now you have 19 year olds in Baghdad interpreting U. S. foreign policy—in Arabic. They were not trained for this…. Everything that they do over there can turn into an international incident.

Iraq was a war of choice, like Vietnam.

It is important to recognize the differences between the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism. The treatment of those detained at Abu Ghraib is governed by the Geneva Conventions, which have been signed by both the U.S. and Iraq.

Our safety at home and the cause of freedom abroad is largely contingent upon our success in Iraq.

America did not invade Iraq because Iraqis are Muslims. Oil, money, economic interests. Who knows? But it was not because Iraqis are Muslims.

You can't just drop the 82nd Airborne into Baghdad and it will all be over.

Foreign interventions always end badly.

I don't think we handled the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad as well as we might have. But that's now history.

One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed - different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgement of defeat.

It's also much clearer how much damage the occupation of Iraq is doing to America's reputation and prestige around the world; and that's just starting now to hit home in the United States.

This wretched war in Iraq which we never should have started, we don’t seem to be able to win, and we don’t know how to get out of …

I support the current operational position and tactics in Iraq, but we’re in a bad place, we didn’t need to be there, and we shouldn’t do it again.

We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations—acting individually or in concert—will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.

…The invasion of Iraq was the worst foreign policy mistake in American history. We invaded a country that was no threat to us…. We have lost so much of our world prestige and world leadership.

By the time the 2008 election arrived, we had finally won the Iraq War, or we were on the road to winning it. We won starting in the summer of 2007 going into late 2011.

Reasonable people can differ on whether or not we should have gone into Iraq.

The United States of America, justifiably and proudly, went to war in Afghanistan in early winter of 2001. The United States invaded Iraq on a false premise in the spring of 2003.

I profoundly do not believe that the United States could make things better in Syria by being there. And we have an evidentiary record of what happens when we're there - nearly a decade in Iraq.

There is no getting around the reality that the second Iraq war was a war of choice; had it been carried out differently, it still would have been an expensive choice and almost certainly a bad one.

I think the Americans are dying to leave Iraq. I was against the war but longed for the fall of Saddam; the decision to go to war clearly was taken long before the matter reached the U.N., given its inevitability. I kept my fingers crossed for the emergence of democracy in Iraq even if that would mean victory for a man whose politics I have little sympathy with.

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.

The entire Islamic world condemned Iran. Nowadays, because of the unwarranted invasion of Iraq by Bush and Blair, which was a completely unjust adventure based on misleading statements, and the lack of any effort to resolve the Palestinian issue, there is massive Islamic condemnation of the United States.

The Bush administration has created an unimaginable catastrophe in Iraq. This should've been one of the easiest military occupations in history and they succeeded in turning it into one of the worst military disasters in history. They can't control it and it's almost impossible for them to get out for reasons you can't discuss in the United States because to discuss the reasons why they can't get out would be to concede the reasons why they invaded.

People say the war in Iraq is a bad war, and the war in Afghanistan is a good war, but what's the difference between them? Democratic people around the world cannot accept that this is a good war. This is just endless war.