Post-Conflict Quotes

The message of reconciliation, of nation-building, of granting amnesty, indemnity, has struck a powerful, favorable chord. And people can understand that we're here not for purposes of retribution but to forget the past and to build our country.

When we get peace in Afghanistan, we'll go to New Zealand to learn best practices for raising sheep. We'll go to Switzerland and study hydroelectric projects.

Our nation has a regrettable history of drawing down our forces and readiness after each conflict, only to find ourselve ill-prepared for the next great struggle.

The fact that you had disruptions in the peace process was not only in Rwanda. We had the same problem in Cambodia, we had the same problem in Mozambique, we had the same problem in Salvador.

For a whole generation after the battle of Pydna, the Roman state enjoyed a profound calm, scarcely varied by a ripple here and there on the surface.

Once the violence has ceased, the US should immediately call on the World Bank and other international institutions to convene a donors conference to rebuild Lebanon's shattered infrastructure.

Truth and reconciliation' are always combined, but I would split them: I don't think Bosnia is ready for reconciliation, but I do think it is ready for truth.

It is by no means surprising that prejudices and resentments, which for years were so assiduously cultivated and so violently inflamed, should not have been turned into affection by a defeat; nor are they likely to disappear as long as the southern people continue to brood over their losses and misfortunes. They will gradually subside when those who entertain them cut resolutely loose from the past and embark in a career of new activity on a common field with those whom they have so long considered their enemies.

I have no idea what the U.S. intends to do further there and what would be the reaction of the Iraqi people. I only know that the sole option is to leave Iraq to the Iraqi people.

In his speech President Bush said we need to rebuild Iraq, provide the people with jobs, and give them hope. If it works there maybe we'll try it in New Orleans.

The Iraqi people are living better lives now than three year ago, no longer living in fear.

The war is over and these are our countrymen again.

Democracies that have achieved military victory ought to refrain from seeking revenge.

Since the Pentagon underestimated the number of troops required after the end of hostilities, we were not prepared to prevent looting or to guard hundreds of weapons dumps spread throughout the country.

The rebuilding of Iraq has been terrible.

I think the day you start building the war plan is the day you start beginning the postwar plan.

Anyway, there were more after the war than before.

To suggest that we need several hundred thousand troops there after military operations ceased, I don’t think is accurate…. We will in fact be greeted as liberators.

The American war is over, but this is far from being the case with the American Revolution.

On the morrow of each conflict I gave the categorical order to confiscate the largest possible number of weapons of every sort and kind.

One of the difficulties about interviewing people in Rwanda is that the country is trying to get on with ordinary life and some people just don't want to get involved in this.

A wise man from my home once told me that these mountains have seen far too much suffering and killing, and that each rock and every boulder you see represents a mujahadeen who died fighting either the Russians or the Taliban. Then the man went on to say that now that the fighting is finished, it is time to build a new era of peace-and the first step in that process is to take up the stones and start turning them into schools.

Truth commissions also allow perpetrators to be reintegrated into society and not go back into the bush to pick up their guns again.

I don't think Bosnia is ready for reconciliation, but I do think it is ready for truth.

In all my travels, I've never seen a country's population more determined to forgive, and to build and succeed than in Rwanda.