Douglas Alexander Quotes

I know I will be severely criticized by the interventionists in America when I say we should not enter a war unless we have a reasonable chance of winning.

To avoid a military conflict, Saddam Hussein has no other choice than to leave the country.

I believe in a strong national defense. But it's my belief that neither Iraq nor Afghanistan poses a threat to national security, and we shouldn't be involved in either area.

Resolution 1441 does not give anyone the right to an automatic use of force. Russia believes that the Iraqi problem should be regulated by the Security Council, which carries the main responsibility for ensuring international security.

Today, war of necessity is used by critics of military action to describe unavoidable response to an attack like that on Pearl Harbor that led to our prompt, official declaration of war, while they characterize as unwise wars of choice the wars in Korea, Vietnam and the current war in Iraq.

Don't invade Iraq. Inspections work, war won't.

I think the disarmament of Iraq is inevitable.

I can't tell you if the use of force in Iraq today will last five days, five weeks or five months, but it won't last any longer than that.

I think Tony Blair has to come down on one side or the other. You can't be a half-hearted supporter of the possible attack on Iraq. You're either with George Bush or you're against him.

I can't accept collective responsibility for the decision to commit Britain now to military action in Iraq without international agreement or domestic support.

But, as you have intimated, I am among those who would be very wary of any military action in the light of Saddam Hussein's willingness to allow the weapons inspectors to go in.

Will we fight or will we retreat? That is the question that is posed to us. Some of my friends on the other side of the aisle often refer to Iraq as a distraction.

If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.

I’m not opposed to all wars; just dumb wars.

Woe to the statesman whose reason for entering a war do not appear so plausible at its end as at its beginning.

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.

Most people are disturbed by the shift from deterrence to preemption but the fact is that in international relations, deterrence has a poor track record

The Senate is rushing to vote on whether to declare war on Iraq without pausing to ask why. Why is war being dealt with not as a last resort but as a first resort?

They wanted to disavow the Powell doctrine

… the financial cost of a [military] strike isn’t a reason to acquiesce in mass murder in Syria.

As head of a military structure I am responsible for the realization of military issues. If you want to have everlasting peace, you must be ready for war. We must be ready to face any provocation.

You have to make sure you know why you are going to war and then use decisive force to end it as soon as possible.

I watched the Bush administration overreact to the Clinton administration, who believed they did too much nation building, sustaining other countries, and that's why we never put the commitment on Afghanistan and Iraq that should have been in there under their policy leadership.

When I'm looking for a leader who's gonna sit across the negotiating table from a nuclear Iran, or who's gonna be intent on destroying ISIS, I couldn't care less about that leader's temperament or his tone or his vocabulary. Frankly, I want the meanest, toughest son of a gun I can find.

I think there are real dangers to escalating military conflict with ISIS, and we need to be aware of them. But at the same time, you have to understand, you know, that this whole thing started with Bashar al-Assad and how he is the one who continued to escalate against the people of Syria who were trying to get democratic reform.