Hank Brown Quotes

I don't think we would have had to be an occupying power if we had done the right thing in 1991.

When you decide to get involved in a military operation in a place like Syria, you've got to be prepared, as we learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, to become the government, and I'm not sure any country, either the United States or I don't hear of anyone else, who's willing to take on that responsibility.

America's foreign policy lacks the backbone to do the right thing in Afghanistan - which is leave.

But, if you believe we should go around the world overturning regimes to make little United States, I don't agree with that, because I don't think we're capable of doing that.

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

It is one thing to be against unilateralism and against nonhumanitarian interventionism - but it is quite another thing to be against humanitarian interventionism.

I have never believed you go to war in Iraq, you go to war in Afghanistan, and believe that you can deal with those battlefields, those countries, in microcosms, or narrow channels.

There are a growing number of conservatives and Republicans who, while they support the president and support the war in Iraq, wonder how many of these nation-building wars we're going to engage in and what the parameters of that are.

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

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

The main challenge for American foreign policy in many places is not to influence relations between states but rather to influence events within states.

Such recognition is not necessary in order to enable the United States to intervene and pacify the Island.

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.

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

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

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.

The United States will always be a global leader, and we need to actively engage the international community to make sure all citizens of the world live freely and equally under their country's rule of law. We cannot, however, afford to fight other nations' wars interminably or stabilize their regions.

Working as a Foreign Office lawyer in 2003, I was less worried by the quibbling over U.N. resolutions on Iraq than the coalition's capacity to effect positive change.

We've made some mistakes in this country in times past - the Korean conflict proceeding that, some say proceeding the Persian Gulf War, where we were ambiguous as to what we would do.

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

You can't just drop the 82nd Airborne into Baghdad and it will all be over.

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.

Unilateral preemption should not in any way be the model for how we conduct international relations.