Robert W. Merry Quotes

Neoconservatives habitually overstate America’s ability to export democracy.

I think that there is a limit on how far you can export democracy.

People the world over now see democracy promotion as a dishonest, dangerous cover for the protection of U. S. power and influence.

I wish Obama would focus on governing the United States and would forget his country's imperialist pretensions.

Is it worth the sacrifice so that little girls can go to school? Or are we simply doing the bidding of the neo-imperialist Americans? Why can’t we bring the soldiers home and just build the schools?

Promoting democracy is one goal of U. S. foreign policy dating back at least 100 years. But it has always been one goal of many, often negated and outweighed by other competing interests.

What takes place in America today was caused by the flagrant interference on the part of successive American governments into others’ business. These governments imposed regimes that contradict the faith, values, and lifestyle of the people.

Our foreign policy has made a wreck of this planet. I'm always in Africa... And when I go to these places I see American policy written on the walls of oppression everywhere.

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

Fantasy is the tendency of Americans, going back to colonial times, to look at the Middle East as a type of fractured mirror of the United States - a type of mirror that could look a lot more like the United States, if, say, a Middle Eastern George Washington would emerge.

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.

For eight years, you had the Bush administration with a very interventionist policy, driving into world affairs, driving primarily into the Islamic world, army first or fist first.

The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion.

The reality is that we are hated not because of our democracy, freedoms, and generous social security system; rather, we are hated because of our involvement in foreign conflicts and quarrels that were never our concern.

Iraq is just a symbol of the attitude of western democracies to the rest of the world.

Obama is cutting back on the idea that we're going to have Jeffersonian democracy in Pakistan or anywhere else.

The United States has overstepped its borders in all spheres - economic, political and humanitarian - and has imposed itself on other states.

After installing friendly leaders in Iran and Guatemala, the United States lost interest in promoting democracy in either country.

I argued that the Bush administration, and the Coalition officials more recently, didn't understand Iraqi society. They thought it was a blank slate, that they could use Iraqis as guinea pigs.

The United States should be devoting a larger percentage of its vast resources to making the world safe for capitalism and democracy ... the proper role of an imperial America is to establish these institutions where they are lacking, if necessary ... by military force. Imposing democracy on all the world's "rogue states" would not push the U. S. Defense budget much above 5 percent of GDP... establishing the rule of law in such countries would pay a long run dividend as their trade revised and expanded.

I don’t think America wants democracies in the Middle East. They wouldn’t be nearly as friendly to us

I don't think it's the job of the United States to build democracies from whole cloth. That's Wilsonianism to me of the most crazy kind.

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

We cannot impose democracy where it has no constituency.

The United States is pursuing a series of goals (spreading democracy, asserting its hegemony, securing oil supplies) that are ultimately incompatible.