Jon Huntsman Jr. Quotes

No border that touches Israel is always secure.

The U.S. must renounce any U.S. interest in constructing permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq.

Russia knows of the vulnerability of her frontiers in this part of the world.

Someone should tell the president that U.S. forces would need to be in Iraq for two to five years, and they will not have an easy time there.

Whether you think we belong in Iraq or not, we can’t tune it out.

The U.S. is not constructing a palatial embassy, by far the largest in the world and virtually a separate city within Baghdad, and pouring money into military bases, with the intention of leaving Iraq to Iraqis.

Don't forget we are in a state of war and no peace. But it's very dynamic and challenging compared to the rest of the Arab world.

I was never convinced that war was the best system to bring democracy to the country.

Iraq is not occupied, but there are foreign forces on its soil, which is different.

But, if you believe we should go around the world overturning regimes to make little United States, I don't agree with that, because I don't think we're capable of doing that.

With regards to the expansion of NATO, I see it as a mistake, even a provocation in a way.

We have no quarrel with America. We all know NATO is the strongest military machine in the world. We simply want them to stop being so busy with our country and worry about their own problems.

The use of large-scale military force in volatile regions of underdeveloped countries is difficult to do right, has major unintended consequences and rarely turns out to be quick, effective, controlled and short lived.

The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries.

Nor should the U.S. military be forced to remain in Iraq essentially as an army for one side of a civil war.

I'm not a wide-eyed imperialist who wants to see Americans manning outposts all over the world. Not outposts to freedom in the cold war cliche, but islands of stability and seas of ethnic strife. That is not what anyone should feel comfortable seeing Americans doing.

People make mistakes. And one of the mistakes that the United States consistently made was that it could intervene and somehow adjust people's governments, especially in the Middle East.

Intervention continues to be a prominent dimension of the post-cold war world.

When you decide to get involved in a military operation in a place like Syria, you've got to be prepared, as we learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, to become the government, and I'm not sure any country, either the United States or I don't hear of anyone else, who's willing to take on that responsibility.

For years, the West supported Mubarak and gave aid for what it hoped was stability - but was actually stagnation - in the Middle East.

I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq. Those who want to come and help are welcome. Those who come to interfere and destroy are not.

We are pursuing neither law nor peace in Southeast Asia. We are not even pursuing freedom.

Our country is being bled daily in an effort to create a democracy in a place where it never existed.

Is military occupation likely to be the midwife of democracy?

No great power will allow itself to be strangulated.