Jimmy Carter Quotes

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.

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

In 2001, we were told that the war in Afghanistan was a feminist mission. The marines were liberating Afghan women from the Taliban. Can you really bomb feminism into a country? And now, after 25 years of brutal war - 10 years against the Soviet occupation, 15 years of US occupation - the Taliban is riding back to Kabul and will soon be back to doing business with the United States.

The reality is that our military presence on foreign soil is as offensive to the people that live there as armed Chinese troops would be if they were stationed in Texas. We would not stand for it here, but we have had a globe-straddling empire and a very intrusive foreign policy for decades that incites a lot of hatred and resentment toward us.

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.

I think no one knows what humanitarian intervention means. If I were a person who was non-American, I would think humanitarian intervention is just another name for United States imperialism.

Anyone supported by the United States is cursed by us.

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

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.

It's alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States.

From the very beginning, the American republic has never shrunk from foreign wars …. There has scarcely been a year since its founding that American soldiers haven’t been overseas … American foreign policy largely consists of doctrines about when and where to intervene in other people’s countries.

You help us pay for the war we’ll fight; we’ll launch it while you’re asleep at night. We don’t need friends all around the world; We’ll buy our friends with our flag unfurled, And spread our arms on a global scale To show the world that we still prevail. Oh, we’re not leaders inspiring peace, But we’re in power as the world’s police. So pay your tax for our little war, And we’ll not ask for any more. This year!

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 [foreign] policy of the United States is modeled on interventionism and aggression. It is logical that we should always be very suspicious.

I certainly am not willing to involve the country in a foreign war for the object of acquiring Texas.

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.

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

It is an American tradition that a standing army is a standing menace to liberty; in Jefferson's presidency the army was reduced to 3,000 men. It is American tradition that we keep out of the affairs of other nations. It is American practice that we meddle with the affairs of everybody else from the West to the East Indies, from Russia to Japan; and to do it we have a standing army of 83,251 men.

America has wearied of Middle East War.

It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”

No Americans may be involved in any operations partaking of a military character in Indonesia

The United States is proud of her remoteness from the old world, her freedom from entanglement in its quarrels, her isolation. Yet in her relatively very short history as an independent state she has fought at least six foreign wars while her troops have landed on foreign soil on nearly a hundred occasions. Not one of those wars was for the purpose of defending American soil.

The government of the United States doesn't want peace. It wants to exploit its system of exploitation, of pillage, of hegemony through war. It wants peace, but what's happening in Iraq? What happened in Lebanon? Palestine? What's happening? What's happened over the last hundred years in Latin America and in the world?

If anything, prolonged overseas military presence breeds radicalization.

Now Republicans are a more interventionist party than they have been at any time since George W. Bush left office.