John R. Allen Quotes

If I have any choice I would prefer Western Troops.

We have no quarrel with America. We all know NATO is the strongest military machine in the world. We simply want them to stop being so busy with our country and worry about their own problems.

The main reason for the armed resistance is the American military presence.

The day after the prison was transferred to the military intelligence command, they had an entire battalion - 1,200, 1,500 soldiers - arrive at Abu Ghraib just for force protection alone.

The stationing of U. S. troops abroad on a permanent basis in foreign military installations is the kind of thing that should not be done without the approval of the Senate.

Keeping a relatively small, predominantly U.S. Special Forces presence in Afghanistan to continue to train the Afghan army past December 2016 is a wise policy that would benefit both Afghans and Americans.

Jimmy Carter proposed withdrawing the troops from South Korea. He was stopped by the United States Congress.

I'm deeply satisfied with the decisions that were taken by Warsaw NATO Summit in 2016, where the presence of the military forces of NATO in Poland was guaranteed.

I mean, the United States has had an eighteen-year military commitment in Afghanistan, and frankly, I can't think of any country other than the United States which is even capable of such a commitment.

Where there is a threat of mass murder, where the stability and order of countries and entire regions are endangered, and where there is no chance of successful political settlements without military support, we must be willing to honestly weigh up the risks of getting involved against the consequences of doing nothing.

Our troops shouldn't be mired in taking land for the Afghan military, providing force protection and fighting a permanent insurgency.

I profoundly do not believe that the United States could make things better in Syria by being there. And we have an evidentiary record of what happens when we're there - nearly a decade in Iraq.

Voters have consistently brought up the topic of 'endless wars' and demands to 'bring the troops home' to me since I ran for office. It's not a left-right issue, either: Both sides question our military presence abroad.

If any part of the U.S. armed forces, which is the biggest armed forces in the world, was withdrawn from Europe, that would be very detrimental to European security.

Pakistan has done some really terrible things, and yet they also have facilitated our military capabilities in ways that are critical to our country.

There is no presence of the American columns in the city of Baghdad at all. We besieged them and we killed most of them.

The United States has been essentially engaged in an ongoing war that most people date from 2001. That war has taken us to Afghanistan, to Iraq, in a lesser way to other countries - Libya, Somalia, Yemen.

The question is always how you get the number of troops needed. They do not have to be coalition forces. We also have to expand the training program for the Afghan National Army and the national police, in particular. and Defense Secretary Robert Gates has already announced support for a significant increase in the Afghan army.

This whole concept of boots on the ground, we've got a phobia about boots on the ground. If our military experts say, we need boots on the ground, we should put boots on the ground and recognize that there will be boots on the ground and they'll be over here, and they'll be their boots if we don't get out of there now.

I think, broadly speaking, the US military's role - US military activism in various parts of the Islamic world over the past several decades has been counterproductive.

It is no coincidence that when the thugs tried to wrest control over Grenada, there were 30 Soviet advisors and hundreds of Cuban military and paramilitary forces on the island.

The most foreign fighters in Iraq are wearing British and American uniforms. The level of self-delusion is bordering frankly on the racist. The vast majority of the people of Iraq are against the occupation of Iraq by the American and British forces.

Iraq will drive American agenda for a long time because Iraq policy has so damaged America in the Middle East region, left us isolated. We are there now by brute strength, we are not there because we are desired.

Whether we kept a certain number of troops there or pulled out completely, if we can't get the Maliki government to include a large segment of its population in its security forces and protection, then the small amount of forces that we would have left there might have slowed this day, but they wouldn't have prevented it altogether.

Its the reality of a situation like this that when you have a large troop presence that it has the tendency to fuel the insurgency, because they can make the incorrect and unfair claim that somehow the United States is here to occupy this country, which of course is not true.