Top 228 Quotes & Sayings by Elliott Abrams - Page 2

American power remains today what it was in the Second World War and the Cold War: the greatest force for freedom in the world.

Obama isn't good off the cuff, especially when challenged; he is far better with a prepared speech.

I well remember a leading Egyptian liberal saying to me in 2003 that she did not favor free elections right then in Egypt; she favored them in a decade's time if she and others had those 10 years to organize freely.

George McGovern and his supporters committed what, in a two-party system, are capital crimes: they did not compromise, they took hard ideological positions, they alienated a large portion of their party's traditional supporters, and they lost - very, very badly.

During the election campaign of 2000, it was generally thought that then-governor Bush didn't know much about foreign policy or national security affairs, and that Colin Powell would lead on that front, while the president's main concern would be domestic.

At Guantanamo Bay, we could create a West Berlin, a free small city within the Communist nation that could trade freely with the U.S. and elect its own officials.

Is multilateralism nothing more than a dodge for simple inaction?

The intersection of religion and world politics has often been a bloody crossroads.

The accession to power in Pyongyang of Kim Jong Un, son of Kim Jong Il and grandson of Kim Il Sung, is a unique achievement in world politics.

Even today, when the Obama administration has liberalized travel to Cuba - and failed to reverse that liberalization when Alan Gross was imprisoned - there are limits.

Rahm Emanuel seems to think he knows Israel very well, and that the way to treat that country and its democratically-elected government is the way he treats all opponents in politics: by attacking and attacking.

The United States needs to be far clearer: we cannot and will not support any government where Hamas has a real influence and the security forces stop fighting terror.

What Israel wants is peace with - and the acknowledgment of - all the Arab countries.

The Fayyad cabinet may well be the best the Palestinians ever get. But whatever its good qualities, there is no democracy.

There are examples of fraternal dictatorships, or one, anyway: the passing of power from Fidel to Raul Castro.

The Iron Dome is great for the U.S.

On taking office in 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama put Israeli settlements at the center of U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Refusing to lift sanctions and adopting tougher rhetoric toward Iran would not be partisan issues. Plenty of Democrats think that those actions are both good politics and good policy.

Fatah is a political party and movement, whose chairman is Mahmoud Abbas.

The good Jew is ritually observant and resists assimilation, in some sense living apart, never fitting comfortably into American or any other society.

The truce brokered by Egypt between Israel and Hamas depends, above all, on the borders between Egypt, Gaza and Israel.

Needless to say, if the Arab-Israeli conflict is about interstate disputes and the need to resolve the future of the West Bank and Gaza, it can be solved; if it is a religious conflict, nothing but violence is ahead.

The mishandling of the would-be airplane bomber Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab's visa is only the latest piece of evidence that the granting of visas should be taken away from the State Department. For the granting of visas - especially today, when terrorism is such a complex threat - is far closer to being a law-enforcement function.

The raids on Freedom House, the National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute, the Adenauer Foundation, and other groups helping Egyptians move toward respect for democratic politics and human rights were of a piece with the practices of Hosni Mubarak - only bolder and more repressive.

We use American influence with Israel not to promote economic growth in the West Bank, but to try and impede Jewish - never Arab - construction in the capital city.

Senator Kerry was fooled by Bashar al-Assad.

If Iran gets a nuclear weapon, its influence and that of Hamas and Hezbollah are strengthened.

I think President Obama views Israel as a problem that needs to be solved.

I would have thought that if you're going to try to punish the Syrians and prevent them from using chemical weapons again, the thing to do is a one-time strike. Maybe a cruise missile strike at one or two of their air bases just so they know what they're going to gain from using chemical weapons on the battlefield.

Immanuel Kant famously claimed that 'he who wills the ends wills the means,' but he never spent much time in Washington.

After 9/11, we did see Palestinian terrorism in the context of all terrorism.

Never fight turf on turf. Fight it on the basis of ideas.

From its earliest days in the nineteenth century, and until the Holocaust, the Orthodox rabbinate in eastern Europe was not enthusiastic about the Zionist movement, which at the time was led by irreligious Jews.

People are entitled to believe the government is constantly lying to them, but it isn't.

The Sandinistas are dedicated Communists, and if they are going to make a compromise with democracy, it's going to be under pressure.

The Knesset is in Israel, and the Western Wall is in Israel, and the sooner the Obama administration realizes this, the closer it will be to a Middle East policy worthy of our country and its long alliance with our ally in Jerusalem - which is, actually, the capital of the state of Israel.

The Right is simply more pro-Israel than the Left.

President Bush met repeatedly with human rights activists and freedom fighters from all over the world to give them encouragement and protection and to advance their cause.

The attack on the British embassy in Tehran came just days after the Iranian 'parliament' voted to expel the British ambassador, and therefore reeks of official complicity.

Olmert made a proposal on the governing of Jerusalem that I do not believe his cabinet or the Knesset would have accepted.

Israel and the Palestinians had been at the table together for decades until the Obama/Mitchell/Rahm Emanuel decision to demand a total end to Israeli construction froze not the settlements but the diplomacy.

Turkey's solidarity with Hamas is not, of course, based on Arab nationalism, which as a non-Arab nation it does not support. It is instead based on a definition of the Mideast conflict as one between Jews and Muslims, precisely the position of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

When a deeply sympathetic American president asks for concessions and compromises and appears able to cajole some from the Palestinians, which was the Clinton/Rabin and Bush/Sharon combination, Israel must respond.

If a Jewish group sat down with a Christian conservative group, and there was a so-called Messianic Jew at the table, that would be the end of the meeting.

I personally would not talk to a Jew for Jesus.

The Egyptian military plays positive and negative roles in Egypt, but the most significant single thing it did under Mubarak was to guarantee an Islamist victory once he left the scene.

I want to be the first guy to reverse a communist revolution.

The conflict between secular Zionism and the settler movement did not appear overnight following Israel's conquests in the 1967 war, for there was an argument that bridged the gap: security.

Iran exports about 2.2 million barrels a day.

Evangelicals too often fall short in their actual teachings about Judaism.

Palestine, as Icelanders see it, includes the Western Wall of the Second Temple, Judaism's holiest site.

It's not good for Israel to govern millions of Palestinians.

Legislation for the Caribbean basin has led to more jobs in the Dominican Republic.

When the policy is controversial, you have to go out and defend it.

There is no way around the contradictions and dangers inherent in Israel's decision to free over 1,000 prisoners in order to liberate Gilad Shalit.

The Pope is not a political figure.

The question was never whether the United States, E.U., NATO, Arab League, U.N. Security Council, and African Union could together using economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, and military attacks to bring Qaddafi down. The question was always how much time, how much blood, and what damage to NATO.

The ransoming of captives has been practiced by Jews for many centuries and has been regarded as a greater obligation than charity for the poor.

The Iranians don't want the same thing we do in Iraq, not really; they want to control Iraq... the Ayatollah hates the United States; the Iranians are enemies of the United States.

In the Philippines, Gloria Arroyo is the daughter of Diosdado Macapagal - but his term ended in 1965, and she was elected in 2001. Hardly a hand-off.