Paul Wolfowitz Quotes

I don’t think that we have ever had a coherent strategy on Iraq.

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.

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

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

Of course, it's imperative that we stabilize Iraq and quickly reduce our armed role there.

I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders. I believe the role of the military is to fight and win war and therefore prevent war from happening in the first place

We have to go in and win this war quickly, and then be prepared to help stabilize Iraq over an indefinite period, five to ten years, at a minimum, I believe, using a large fraction of American forces. This is a major undertaking that likely would require a total of 150,000 troops and could stay above 100,000 for several years

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.

I would hope that we have in place the adequate resources to become an army of occupation because you’re going to walk into chaos

History will judge the war against Iraq not by the brilliance of its military execution, but by the effectiveness of the post-hostilities activities

Is military occupation likely to be the midwife of democracy?

To suggest that we need several hundred thousand troops there after military operations ceased, I don’t think is accurate…. We will in fact be greeted as liberators.

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.

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.

Afghanistan would have been difficult enough without Iraq. Iraq made it impossible. The argument that had we just focused on Afghanistan we'd now be okay is persuasive, but it omits the fact that we weren't supposed to get involved in nation-building in Afghanistan.

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 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.

American troops and American taxpayers are shouldering a huge burden with no end in sight because Mr. Bush took us to war on false premises and with no plan to win the peace.

Liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk.

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.

Iraq was a war of choice, like Vietnam.

It's very hard to understand just what our strategy is in Syria, frankly, and on Iraq that this is Iraq's war, that the role of the United States is to help Iraq, to arm, train, support, provide air support, but this has to be Iraq's war.

Nobody should claim that the war [in Iraq] is over. But certainly it can be said that the regime is finished.

I think the problem with John Bolton is he disagrees with President Trump's foreign policy. He would be closer to John McCain's foreign policy. John Bolton still believes the Iraq war was a good idea. He still believes that regime change is a good idea. He still believes that nation-building is a good idea.

Regime change has been an American policy under the Clinton administration, and it is the current policy. I support the policy. But regime change in and of itself is not sufficient justification for going to war--particularly unilaterally--unless regime change is the only way to disarm Iraq of the weapons of mass destruction pursuant to the United Nations resolution.