Gary Goetzman Quotes

President-elect Donald Trump has a host of national security challenges to deal with as he assumes office, from the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan to the grinding Syrian civil war to the flexing of Russian muscles under President Vladimir Putin to how to deal with ISIS as the terrorist army retreats in Iraq.

By invading Iraq, the President has undermined the War on Terrorism.

Serbia must now be dealt with.

Now an American president like [Ronald] Reagan wouldn't have a meeting, wouldn't have a summit. He'd give 'em a warning and then - or [Gerge W.] Bush would give 'em a warning and then - whatever would happen. Because you don't allow the murder of American citizens. You just don't permit it.

I vowed to our countrymen that I would do everything I could to protect the American people... That's why I said to Afghanistan: If you harbor a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorist.

America roused to a righteous anger has always been a force for good. States that have been supporting if not Osama bin Laden, people like him need to feel pain. If we flatten part of Damascus or Tehran or whatever it takes, that is part of the solution.

In international affairs, you never threaten things you're not prepared to do.

Maybe we ought to consider a Golden Rule in foreign policy: Don't do to other nations what we don't want happening to us. We endlessly bomb these countries and then we wonder why they get upset with us?

We are today, in this country, convulsed by the situation in Iraq. It is an extraordinary crisis. It is taxing our men and women in uniform, and it is certainly taxing our resolve.

The greatest danger of bombs is in the explosion of stupidity that they provoke.

So a truthful assessment of how America is doing in the war on terror as a result of President Bush's war on Iraq is that we have been set back by decades.

Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we're spending in Pakistan, we're spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?

I am convinced that military action will not prevent further acts of international terrorism against the United States.

When I go there to Afghanistan or Pakistan, the question both asked - and if it's not asked, implied - is, 'Are you staying this time?' because we left last time, in 1989 in Afghanistan, and we sanctioned Pakistan from 1990 to 2002. So I think it's a fair question.

I don't believe Iran is a suicide state.

We're in an illusion about what our role is in world politics and foreign affairs, and our policies are killing and destroying and doing a lot of things that we are not aware of.

To win the war on terror, we must know who our friends are and where our enemies are hiding. We can't continue fighting terrorism using the same foreign policy blueprints that were in place before September 11th.

I used to have a little saying I used when people said, 'What are your priorities?' I'd give them a bit of government alphabet soup. I'd say 'CTCPROW: Counterterrorism, counterproliferation, rest of the world.'

I think George Bush is the most dangerous man in the world.

We must hunt the terrorists down and kill them. There is no other way to respond to those so committed to the destruction of life.

In foreign policy, the only thing worse than not doing something is doing something that fails or makes the situation worse.

It's always a mistake for writers to key their submissions to world events, because they move so quickly and unpredictably, as has certainly proven the case in Afghanistan.

Anyone supported by the United States is cursed by us.

I was distressed that after 9/11, when the United States was attacked by terrorists, the United States' response was to attack Afghanistan, where some of the terrorists had been.

Intervention continues to be a prominent dimension of the post-cold war world.