William McKinley Quotes

The U.S. has intervened more often in more countries farther from its own shores than has any power in modern history.

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.

The [foreign] policy of the United States is modeled on interventionism and aggression. It is logical that we should always be very suspicious.

The Great Seal was an early proclamation of 'humanitarian intervention,' to use the currently fashionable phrase.

We're in an illusion about what our role is in world politics and foreign affairs, and our policies are killing and destroying and doing a lot of things that we are not aware of.

It's not the job of the U.S. military to do nation-building or produce democratic utopias.

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.

A great power has to have the discipline not only to go when necessary but to know when not to go. Getting involved in ethnic, religious civil wars is a recipe for disaster.

I believe that the American administration of Iraq has been arrogant, has pursued policies that are illegal in international law and has been ignorant and incompetent. I said this very forthrightly to the senators.

From the very beginning, the American republic has never shrunk from foreign wars …. There has scarcely been a year since its founding that American soldiers haven’t been overseas … American foreign policy largely consists of doctrines about when and where to intervene in other people’s countries.

The United States can't go in and impose order on chaos every place in the world.

We don't have the temperament to be an occupying power.

Perhaps we have already intervened too much in the affairs of other peoples.

Military intervention is to be considered when all else fails.

If American lives must end, and American treasure be spilled, in countries we barely know, that is the price that change has demanded of conviction and of our enduring covenant.

The policy of the United States in the Spanish war and since has given it a position of influence among the nations that it never had before.

Wherever there's injustice, oppression, and suffering, America will show up six months late and bomb the country next to where it's happening.

The question of when you intervene is probably the toughest question of American foreign policy.

We have no desire to be the world's policeman. But America does want to be the world's peacemaker.

America has wearied of Middle East War.

The next time some neocon, demanding whatever military intervention neocons are demanding that day, invokes Hitler or Munich or appeasement, lock up your silver.

It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”

To impose justice, stability, and cooperation on oppressed or ungoverned nations is usually a tall order. It is hardly ever done cheaply, especially against nationalist resistance

However desirable the maintenance of ex-territorial rights hitherto enjoyed might be, it was obvious that the public opinion of this country would not countenance a war for the purpose of maintaining them.