Richard Lugar Quotes

The insurgents are Baathists and Sunnis in Iraq who have as their goal a separate and distinct one of toppling the government that is there and creating their own.

if you allow…for a civil war to happen between the Shiites and the Sunnis, Iraq is finished forever. It will be dismembered. It will not only be dismembered, it will cause so many conflicts in the region that it will bring the whole region into a turmoil that will be hard to resolve

Shia leaders prefer to keep Iraq united, as long as they maintain their dominance over it, especially now that they have been portrayed as the majority who suffered injustice and oppression over the years. Hence, the atmospheres have been prepared and charged by the American agents to hand the reins of power to the “Shias” or to hold the lion’s share.

In a highly diverse and fragmented society like Iraq, the military...is one of the few national institutions that stresses national unity as an important principle. Tot ear apart the army in the war’s aftermath could lead to the destruction of one of the only forces for unity within the society.

So the idea that you could put Kurds, Shiite Arabs, and Sunni Arabs in a nice, liberal, federal system in Iraq in a short amount of time, six months or a year, boggles the mind.

I cannot accept a divide between Malagasy people and a civil war.

Religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it was at any time in the past. The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews versus Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians versus Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians versus Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants versus Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims versus Hindus), Sudan (Muslims versus Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims versus Christians), Ethiopia and Eritrea (Muslims versus Christians), Sri Lanka (Sinhalese Buddhists versus Tamil Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims versus Timorese Christians), Iran and Iraq (Shiite versus Sunni Muslims), and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians versus Chechen Muslims; Muslim Azerbaijanis versus Catholic and Orthodox Armenians) are merely a few cases in point. In these places religion has been the explicit cause of literally millions of deaths in the last 10 years.

My own prediction is that the Iraqis will all fly at each other’s throats and that there will be a bad slump in the administration that will continue until someone strong enough to dominate the country emerges, or, alternatively, until we have to step in and intervene.

Ethno-sectarian violence is a particular concern in Iraq, as it is a cancer that continues to spread if left unchecked.

Prime Minister Maliki, released from American restraint, acted on his worst instincts, creating enormous distrust in Iraq's Kurdish population and deeply embittering Sunnis in western Iraq's Al Anbar, who lost any confidence in a Baghdad government they saw as adversarial.

Daesh thought it could exploit the vulnerability of the Iraqi state, but it underestimated the overwhelming desire of the Iraqi people for unity.

Iraq lacks leaders capable of soothing sectarian wounds, and Western attempts to pick them or force their hand invite anti-imperialist backlash.

The U.S. cannot force Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds to make peace or to act for the common good. They have been in conflict for 1,400 years.

Only in South Africa could you have a change in government without civil war. If there wasn't the depth of love and caring among our people, this would not have happened.

Iraq is in a civil war. There is no road in that country that is safe.

Iraq is falling apart.

Sectarian politics gets votes in Iraq. But sectarian government fails in Iraq.

Lebanon, of course, is a country with great problems. Traditionally, they have religious-national groups or ethnic-national groups. They have the Druses. Even the two Moslem sects, the Sunnis and the Shiites, are apart. Then they have the armed groups. Everybody's got a private army.

The national unity government will need to implement a program that brings all Iraqis together, builds a happy future for the people of Iraq, and gets Iraq to stand on its own feet.

This union has been divided in like a civil war - brother against brother - sister against sister. And I'm pulling it together. We've already seen evidence of that in New York, in Pennsylvania, in California. The first thing is we have to get on the same page. We have to be united in one cause.

Well, that our main concern is that Iraq should not become a divided country.

Violence would be a huge gift to those who want a divided Lebanon.

What we now have in Iraq is a defeat.

The best way to unite the country is to have a good national government.

The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party divisions and make them one people.