Intervention Consequences Quotes

If you go into a country, then you’re going to have to do something about it, and that is hard–harder than invading.

These people talk of a "middle-of-the-road" policy. What they do not see is that the isolated interference, which means the interference with only one small part of the economic system, brings about a situation which the government itself — and the people who are asking for government interference — find worse than the conditions they wish to abolish: the people who are asking for rent control are very angry when they discover there is a shortage of apartments and a shortage of housing.

Did we not aid the grisly Taliban to achieve and hold power? Yes indeed 'we' did. Well, does that not double or triple our responsibility to remove them from power?

In Iraq #1 we stayed within U.N. mandates, limited our response, went home after Kuwait was freed - and were censured for allowing Shiites and Kurds to be butchered and not going to Baghdad when the road was open and the dictator tottering. In Iraq #2 we removed the tyrant at less cost than the liberation of Kuwait during the earlier war, stayed on to ensure freedom and fair representation for various groups - and are being castigated for either using too little force to ensure needed order or too much power that stifles indigenous aspirations and turns popular opinion against us.

I think the rule should be that if we're going to take actions overseas that result in the deaths of people, the United States should take responsibility for that.

I think interventions tend to be wrong. That doesn't mean to say that every intervention has been a disaster, but it does mean that generally they tend to screw up.

Foreign interventions always end badly.

Laos is the ghost of American military interventions past.

I want people to take thought about their condition and to recognize that the maintainence of a free society is a very difficult and complicated thing and it requires a self-denying ordinance of the most extreme kind. It requires a willingness to put up with temporary evils on the basis of the subtle and sophisticated understanding that if you step in to do something about them you not only may make them worse, you will spread your tenticles and get bad results elsewhere.

Libya was a terrible mistake. You know, frankly, that's something that people ought to be thinking about in regard to Hillary [Clinton]. You know, they talk about Benghazi, which is very legitimate. Of course it is. But we should never have deposed [Muamar] Gaddafi. That was a terrible mistake.

Our intervention to destabilize the Assad regime has really made the chaos worse in Syria. And if you were to get rid of Assad today, I would actually worry about the 2 million Christians that are protected by Assad.