Elliott Abrams Quotes

I visited Libya in September 1996 for the 27th anniversary of the 'revolution' - a military coup that a 27-year-old Gadhafi led to topple the monarchy and since which he has ruled. Some were optimistic that Gadhafi's 'revolution' could herald a new Libya, but it didn't take long for his brutality to stamp out any such hopes.

In Uzbekistan, hundreds of protesters were recently killed under the corrupt regime of President Karimov in what human rights groups are calling a massacre.

I hate to say it but I was glad when they shot him. I don’t believe in terrorism or assassination but he could have become the American dictator.

When I was at university in the Fifties, Latin America was full of dictators. Trujillo was the emblematic figure because, of course, of his cruelty, corruption, extravagance, and theatricalities.

Gaddafi tried to give a masterclass to men like the Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, on how to crush a civilian uprising.

Listen, 'The Purge' actually exists in some form or another in many places around the world when you think about it.

There are, of course, all sorts of other unpleasant regimes outside the walls as well - the military dictators of Latin America and the apartheid regime of South Africa.

You can't, in the 21st century, continue to live in a system where people live under martial law for 30 years.

If I were dictator, I'd have a catch-all crime of disrespect.

The old bastions of the post-communist regime collapsed before my very eyes. The monsters who had kept Ukraine in a criminal state left the stage.

The post-totalitarian malady has taken its most acute form in Romania. And it has taken place for very specific reasons. The repression here has been more cruel, more brutal, than in other states caught in the inferno of a 'socialist paradise.'

It seems to be that when these communist regimes take over - if you look at the example of Vietnam or Cambodia or Nicaragua - that even in conditions of peace they don't seem to be able to figure out how to support their people, and the human suffering is enormous.

When you review the Central American wars or other Latin American wars, you find that there were dictators and there were insurgents.

Now in its third year in office, the Obama Administration has never championed the cause of human rights. Its slow reaction in June 2009 to the stealing of the election in Iran and the birth of the 'Green Movement' there, and its delay in backing the rebellions in Egypt, Libya, and Syria, are evidence of this problem.

Most of wars or military coups or invasions are done in the name of democracy against democracy.

When a dictatorship controls the political life of a country, responsible opposition cannot develop, and dissent is driven underground and toward the extreme. And to draw attention away from their social and economic failures, dictators place blame on other countries and other races, and stir the hatred that leads to violence. This status quo of despotism and anger cannot be ignored or appeased, kept in a box or bought off.

Not a single Arab ruler is a willing participant in democratic reform. Their regimes are festooned with opportunists attached to their financial and political privileges.

Strongmen? You have to have strong people to rule. South America is a rough place.

Nigeria first entered...'the dismal tunnel' on January 15, 1966, when the military overthrew all the institutions of a democratically elected government... If there is light at the end of this tunnel, it is imperceptible to anyone not paid to see it.

There is a terrible price the U. S. Government must pay when it associates itself … intimately with a repressive regime.

He [Rafael Trujillo] had his torture chambers. He had his political assassinations. But he kept law and order, cleaned the place up, made it sanitary, built public works, and he didn’t bother the United States. So that was fine with us.

In the Middle East there are two methods of control: mass repression and mass bribery. In Syria they use mass repression; in Saudi Arabia, mass bribery. In Bahrain, a bit of both.

I am horrified by the moral amnesia that develops when a dictator dies.

A source of embarrassment for Libyans, Gadhafi has never been a joke: disappearances, a police state, zero freedom of expression, and poverty for at least a third of the population of country tremendously wealthy thanks to oil.

Benghazi was a tragedy. Libya is a tragedy.