Jim Gerlach Quotes

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.

I made a movie to explain to the American public what had been achieved in regards to disarmament of Iraq and why inspectors aren't in Iraq today and detailing the very complex, murky history of interaction between Iraq, the United Nations and the United States. It is most definitely not a pro-Iraq movie. It is a pro-truth movie.

Isn’t it clear that the British government has no policy of our own in Iraq and that we are totally dependent on the policy of the United States?

Without American leadership at the U.N., countries just continue to talk and socialize and spend taxpayer dollars.

The United States, as all you know, did not come to Iraq for oil, not to occupy. We came here only to help.

…though the American government did much to encourage the organs of the League, the fact that it stood aside, sharing neither the rights nor the duties of the League powers, was a fatal handicap to joint action.

When America rejected the League, she had deliberately chosen to rest solely upon treaties with the sanction of public opinion alone…

International institutions like the UN can only be as effective as its members allow it to be.

We should change our attitude toward the United Nations. There has to be some power in the world superior to our own.

We should not have attacked Iraq without the okay of the United Nations. Now we have to live with that mistake. We're living with it, and too many of our guys are dying with it.

For most countries, serving the UN's objectives has never seemed worth even the smallest of risks. Member nations do not want a large, reputable, strong and independent United Nations, no matter their hypocritical pronouncements otherwise. What they want is a weak, beholden, indebted scapegoat of an organization, which they can blame for their failures or steal victories from.

The initial [Iraq] war was won in about 6 weeks, but the peace was lost soon thereafter.

If the international community must act, then America must lead.

The League of Nations seemed to us the embryo of a future international organization; and for the struggle against the internationales, whether Socialistic or Communist, it offered the best possible instrument. It was a great blow to us when the United States refused to become a party to these hopes.

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

We recognize and accept our own deep involvement in the destiny of men everywhere. We are accordingly pledged to honor, and to strive to fortify, the authority of the United Nations. For in that body rests the best hope of our age for the assertion of that law by which all nations may live in dignity.

Genuine association of interest on the part of the great powers must precede the transformation of the united nations military alliance into a political society of nations.

Washington still refuses to provide evidence to support the claims in 1990 that a huge Iraqi military build-up on the Saudi border justified war.

In 2016, Washington and its coalition partners conducted more than 7,000 strikes in Iraq and Syria. And in Libya, the United States has conducted more than 350 air strikes since August as part of its military campaign against ISIS there.

I think the United Nations is a useful format to discuss matters, but I think it's a weak institution in being able to carry out matters and, in many respects even, it has been harmful on things like human rights.

If the Australian Government were to associate itself with the United States attack on Iraq, which was not sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council, then we'd put this country at risk.

The U.N. brings everybody together. And without it, we can't deal with Ebola or terrorism or climate change. But it's 70 years old. It's tired. It's acquired a lot of bad habits. And often it feels like only new bad habits get added and old bad habits don't get taken away.

The U.N. doesn't have any troops; we borrow them from governments.

The U.N.'s driving mission is to accumulate power at the expense of the sovereignity of individual nations and fundamental individual rights, and its gun-ban treaty proves it.

There is, and there will be, an increasing demand for a principled global security provider, for a superpower that believes in multilateralism and cooperation.