Responsibility to Protect Quotes

I'm not saying it was wrong to intervene in Kosovo.

The story of U.S. policy during the genocide in Rwanda is not a story of willful complicity with evil. U.S. officials did not sit around and conspire to allow genocide to happen.

I used to wish there was a useful term for those of us who thought American power should be used to remove psychopathic dictators.

In 1999, NATO did impose a no-fly zone in Kosovo without seeking a U.N. resolution to carry out air strikes on Serbian forces.

Be careful. Legal at State was worried about this yesterday—Genocide finding could commit the U. S. Government to actually do something.

Countries can’t stand by as a genocide takes place in another country.

The international community unfortunately did take sides in Libya, and we would never allow the Security Council to authorise anything similar to what happened in Libya.

Every soldier, every cop who's faced with a decision to make, a life or death, does the best he or she can.

I don’t like genocide, but I would not commit our troops [to stop it.]

As international support for Obama's decision to attack Syria has collapsed, along with the credibility of government claims, the administration has fallen back on a standard pretext for war crimes when all else fails: the credibility of the threats of the self-designated policeman of the world.

Armenians, as a people that have survived the Genocide, have a moral duty towards mankind and history in the prevention of genocides. We have done and will continue to do our best to support the persistent implementation of the Genocide Convention. Genocide cannot concern only one people, because it is a crime against humanity.

I don't want to close the door that if any of us were president of the United States that we would sit idly by and watch something like the Holocaust go down. I don't want to close the door on the United States involving themselves and putting a stop to that. Can we spend money on that? Yeah, I think so.

The many questions about the bombing of Yugoslavia by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation - meaning primarily the United States - come down to two fundamental issues: 'What are the accepted and applicable 'rules of world order,' and how do these apply in the case of Kosovo?'

I did not support the U.S. decision to intervene with military force in Libya. The evidence was not persuasive that a large-scale massacre or genocide was either likely or imminent. Policies other than military intervention were never given a full chance.

Well, the U.N. Security Council resolution 1973 is very clear. It says all necessary measures to be taken to protect civilians and civilian areas. I mean, that to me is very clear.

I think it's appropriate for the international community in situations like this to intervene in Kosovo. I am in favor of an intervention. On some level, you have to say that at least somebody is doing something.

The disagreeable reality for those who believe in human rights is that there are some occasions - and Iraq may be one of them - when war is the only real remedy for regimes that live by terror.

We can no longer stand for the Security Council passing resolutions and then in effect heaving alongside and taking a vacation. We cannot leave it to the secretary general to go cap in hand.

So while I will never minimize the costs involved in military action, I am convinced that a failure to act in Libya would have carried a far greater price for America.

A man's duty? To be ready -- with rifle or rood -- to defend his home when the showdown comes.

Had the United States and the United Kingdom gone on alone to capture Baghdad, under the provisions of the Geneva and Hague conventions we would have been considered occupying powers and therefore would have been responsible for all the costs of maintaining or restoring government, education and other services for the people of Iraq.

Clinton considers the 2011 overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya to be one of her finest hours as secretary of state. President Obama considers it one of his worst failures.

When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action.

It depends on the situation. I mean, on one hand there's the argument that people should be left alone on the other hand, there's the argument to wade in a stop slaughters in places like Bosnia and Kosovo and what we probably should have done in Rwanda.

The West's post-Holocaust pledge that genocide would never again be tolerated proved to be hollow, and for all the fine sentiments inspired by the memory of Auschwitz, the problem remains that denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.