Anthony Zinni Quotes

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

I’d rather build highways here then try nation building in Iraq

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.

The possibility of the United States winning the war and losing the peace is real and serious

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

The question in my mind then is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many.

I don’t think our troops ought to be used for what’s called nation-building. I think our troops ought to be used to fight and win war.

We went in there [the Iraq War invasion] with a complete misunderstanding, regionally and inside Iraq, of what was going on. I don’t ever want that to happen again.

The most fundamental purpose of government is defense, not empire.

One of the enduring mysteries of America's occupation of Iraq is why a nation that so little relishes peacekeeping nonetheless refuses to turn the job over to the United Nations.

If a senator calls me up and asks me what should we do in Iraq, I'm happy to talk to him.

I was disappointed not to be able to interview Mr. Clinton. I met him two years ago. I was looking forward to talking with him about issues from Africa to terrorism.

The war in Iraq has as much to do with terrorism as the administration has to do with compassion.

One of the lessons of Vietnam, which we failed to heed in the Iraq war and the Afghanistan surge, is that before you commit U.S. military forces to aid or assist, it is essential to know what you want them to achieve.

I have never dealt with people who have so little political sagacity as the Turks.

You can’t undo a thousand years of history by sending military troops into a country.

We're not going to spread democracy at the business end of a M16 held by a 23 year old Marine.

The nation's mere possession of military power ready for exertion provides visible support for the nation's expression of views on foreign affairs, and that often is enough to make the expression persuasive. Thus a foreign policy which has a respectable basis in justice and morality is strengthened if it has also a respectable basis in physical force.

If you go into a country, then you’re going to have to do something about it, and that is hard–harder than invading.

The Pentagon is always going to be the last to want to intervene. It is up to the civilians to tell us what they want to do and we’ll figure out how to do it.

I spent half my life on economic relations and building relationships with allies and friends; I spent the other half of it on warfare and the Third World. Some people tell me that the mixture of economic analysis and welfare is ideal training for Wall Street.

No American witnessing the way that President George W. Bush and his generals have bungled the Iraq war can deny that our leaders, civilian and military alike, will have to get a lot smarter if the U.S. armed services are to persuade the Islamic world to embrace the blessings of democracy.

We should not act as if we were an imperialist power, willy-nilly moving into capitals in that part of the world, taking down governments.