Dan Quayle Quotes

I'm concerned about getting Iraq on its feet.

As the Iraqi people better understand that Saddam Hussein and his regime are history, it is my hope that they will get behind the coalition effort to help them create a democratic government and rebuild their country.

We’d continue to pay them. Using army allows us not to demobilize it immediately and put a lot of unemployed people on the street.

Since 2001, NATO or its leading member states have initiated military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lybia. All three campaigns led to various forms of regime change, and. in the case of Iraq and Lybia, the deterioration of the state.

Whether or not Afghanistan would be a peaceful nation-state had we not gone into Iraq I doubt. Afghanistan is going to be Afghanistan, no matter how hard we try to make it something else.

Somebodys paying the corporations that destroyed Iraq and the corporations that are rebuilding it. Theyre getting paid by the American taxpayer in both cases. So we pay them to destroy the country, and then we pay them to rebuild it. Those are gifts from U.S. taxpayer to U.S. corporations.

Nation building is our central task, both in Afghanistan and in Iraq. And states, nations can't just be built with military power. Despite all difficulties, it's very inspiring to see how the Kurds, the Arab Sunnis and the Shiites are coming together here, how they're jointly defining the basis on which their state is to be built, the political course this state will pursue and who is to receive which cabinet positions.

[ Iraq and Afghanistan] don't get better, they only get worse. Bombing them has only enabled them to grow and multiply.

Having defeated and then occupied Iraq, democratizing the country should not be too tall an order for the world's sole superpower.

In America, one of the great liberal documents of the world is the Declaration of Independence. One of the great conservative documents of the world is the Constitution of the United States. We need both documents to build a country. One to get it started - liberal. And the other to help maintain the structure over the years - conservative.

[Afghanistan and Iraq] are still countries that are fragile enough that we're gonna have to partner with them in some way.

President Bush is going to establish elections there in Iraq. He's going to rebuild the infrastructure. He's going to create jobs. He said if it works there, he'll try it here.

Iraq is a very wealthy country. Enormous oil reserves. They can finance, largely finance the reconstruction of their own country. And I have no doubt that they will.

The most interesting place by far was Afghanistan. Just because it is a place that I cannot see myself living. The hardness of the people and the history of the country is just so completely intense.

What we have done, I think, is build a model from a lot of hard lessons in Afghanistan and Iraq but in other places around the world, where we are working with them in an advisory capacity.

But if the U.S. were to leave now and abandon Iraq without establishing the grounds for a united country, that would definitely be a second mistake.

The question now is how best to help the Iraqi people build a democratic and free Iraqi society that ensures respect for the rights of all Iraqis.

In all my travels, I've never seen a country's population more determined to forgive, and to build and succeed than in Rwanda.

The Islamic world is not only suffering from the American occupation of Palestine and Iraq, it's also suffering from the unbelievable corruption in Afghanistan by Afghans themselves and also in Iraq - I'm just giving these 2 examples of countries which are under direct occupation; I do not mean at all to negate the terrible events that led to this or what's going on with the foreign occupation there.

Afghanistan will, by the grace of God, stand on its own feet in three to four years time. Until then, of course, we need strong support from the international community, including the United States, to stay with us and support us fully.

Iraq has gone from being on the brink to being on the mend, and it clearly has some big advantages.

Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003, Hussein and his regime were brought down, we declared "Mission Accomplished" and celebrated victory . . . and chaos erupted. We did not assert control and authority over the country, especially Baghdad. We did not bring with us the capacity to impose our will. We did not take charge. And Iraq did not in a few weeks magically transform itself into a stable nation with democratic leaders. Instead a raging insurgency engulfed the country.

There has been sort of, if you will, a moral interventionism on the part of the United States trying to reshape countries in our own image. Now, we had to go into Afghanistan. We didn't have to go into Iraq. But the idea that you could create a Vermont in the Middle East like that was naive from the beginning.

The Western world doesn't really give enough credit to the importance in history of the Soviet invasion and the subsequent war in Afghanistan. For us it was a sideshow of the Cold War. For the Islamic world it was an unprovoked infidel invasion of a Muslim country not unlike Iraq.

We've got to reach out to Muslim countries.We've got to have them be part of our coalition. If they hear people running for president who basically shortcut it to say we are somehow against Islam, that was one of the real contributions, despite all the other problems, that George W. Bush made after 9/11 when he basically said after going to a Mosque in Washington, we are not at war with Islam or Muslims.