Rand Paul Quotes

People make mistakes. And one of the mistakes that the United States consistently made was that it could intervene and somehow adjust people's governments, especially in the Middle East.

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.

The west has a great deal to answer for in the Middle East, from Britain's belated empire-building after the First World War to the US and British policy that condemns modern Iraq to the material and social squalor of a half-century ago.

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.

Anybody who believes that we can democratize Iran, Iraq and Syria by military force is living in a fantasy world.

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

We should not act as if we were an imperialist power, willy-nilly moving into capitals in that part of the world, taking down governments.

The Bush Administration went into the Middle East thinking it was spreading democracy. Instead they spread sectarianism.

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.

The mistakes of the Iraq war are not only tactical and strategic, but historical. It is essentially a war of colonialism, attempted in the post-colonial age.

Iraq is part of a legitimate American effort not to have democracy everywhere but to have democracy somewhere.

In time it will become clear to everyone that support for the policies of pre-emptive war and interventionist nation-building will have much greater significance than the removal of Saddam Hussein itself.

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

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

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

The greatest crime since World War II has been U.S. foreign policy.

And in Iraq we tried to implement the same policy that was so successful in Saudi Arabia, but Saddam Hussein didn't buy. When the economic hit men fail in this scenario, the next step is what we call the jackals.

We're not going to spread democracy at the business end of a M16 held by a 23 year old Marine.

Throughout history states have also used force to reform, restructure, or rebuild the domestic institutions of other countries

Neoconservatives habitually overstate America’s ability to export democracy.

I'm no friend of Tony Blair's and I consider the Middle East policies of the United States and the UK fatal.

Stability is when the U.K. and U.S. invade a country and impose the regime of their choice.

I don't believe in regime change, certainly not in the Middle East.

It's great that we're bringing democracy to Iraq. I can't wait to see how we do it! What are we gonna do, give them our civics textbooks?

In general, Americans are not very good at nation-building and not very good colonialists.