Michael Ignatieff Quotes

The worst thing for an effective war on terror is the suspicion of states about the objectives.

Since September 11 2001, editors in America have faced some excruciating choices, as the attempt to wage a war against a new kind of enemy sometimes strained the boundaries of our laws and values.

To win the war on terror, we must know who our friends are and where our enemies are hiding. We can't continue fighting terrorism using the same foreign policy blueprints that were in place before September 11th.

We simply cannot afford to allow our government to go unscrutinised, most of all in amid the bleak seeming imperatives of the 'war on terror'.

September 11 was just an excuse to expand the Patriot Act. Legislation which had been proposed for years just got stuck in.

War and democracy have never been happy bedfellows…. War has always threatened democracy.

A democracy cannot wage war. When you go to war, you pass a law giving extraordinary power to the President. The people of the country assume when the emergency is over, the rights and powers that were temporarily delegated to the Chief Executive will be returned to the states, counties and to the people.

The second term of the Bush administration and first five years of the Obama presidency have been devoted to codifying and institutionalizing the vast and unchecked powers that are typically vested in leaders in the name of war. Those powers of secrecy, indefinite detention, mass surveillance, and due-process-free assassination are not going anywhere. They are now permanent fixtures not only in the US political system but, worse, in American political culture.

Every American, regardless of their background, has the right to live free of unwarranted government intrusion. Repealing the worst provisions of the Patriot Act will reign in this gross abuse of power and restore to everyone our basic Constitutional rights.

This has been the new normal since September 11. Everyone knows, but nobody says, that if something happens again, the elite consensus in this country, and the overwhelming consensus of the citizenry, will be to pitch the Bill of Rights out the window and start rounding folks up.

This thing called Patriot Act, through which we abdicated a lot of our civil rights to defend the country against terrorism, it's a four-year story.

Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous.

The administration of George W. Bush, emboldened by the Sept. 11 attacks and the backing of a Republican Congress, has sought to further extend presidential power over national security. Most of the expansion has taken place in secret, making Congressional or judicial supervision particularly difficult.

As we continue to fight the war on terror, we express our gratitude to our troops whose valor over the last three years provided freedom to the Iraqis, while protecting our liberty here at home.

Can a democratic nation fight a War on Terror and at the same time bend over backward so as not to offend a few visitors' rights?

Criticism in a time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government.

The U.S. has since the end of World War II had an answer - we stand for free peoples and free markets, we are willing to support and defend them - we will sustain a balance of power that favors freedom.

Victory is the most important aspect in Iraq, because victory in Iraq will help us have victory in the War on Terror.

We do not take away the powers of surveillance. We do not take away the right and the power of the government to go after those who would do us wrong.

There are few things more dangerous in a democracy than allowing a President to wage secret wars without the knowledge of the country.

One side-effect of the so-called war on terror has been a crisis of liberalism. This is not only a question of alarmingly illiberal legislation, but a more general problem of how the liberal state deals with its anti-liberal enemies.

No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.

The first weekend after the attacks of September 11, George W. Bush had a meeting at Camp David with his top advisors, including Colin Powell, the secretary of state. And there was a lively debate about Iraq policy, in which some people from the Pentagon were arguing that the war against terrorism should include Saddam Hussein.

Yes, what has happened is we have moved from responding to these terrorist attacks as acts of civil disobedience to getting to the point after September 11 that we said, no, this is not just civil disobedience, this is an act of war.

We told the Taliban in no uncertain terms that if this happened, it’s their ass. No difference between the Taliban and al Qaeda now. They both go down.