A Quote by Richard N. Haass
I did not believe in the Iraq war.
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I opposed the war in Iraq because I did not believe it was in our national security interest, and I still don't. What we [America] did was akin to taking a baseball bat to a beehive. Our primary security threat right now is terrorism - and by doing what we did in Iraq, we've managed to alienate a good part of the world and most of the allies whose intelligence and other help we need to combat and defeat terrorism.
It's very hard to understand just what our strategy is in Syria, frankly, and on Iraq that this is Iraq's war, that the role of the United States is to help Iraq, to arm, train, support, provide air support, but this has to be Iraq's war.
I should have voted for the first Iraq war. George Bush did that one very well. I had been skeptical. I was afraid that George Bush was going to treat the first Iraq war the way his son treated the second.
In the wake of winning the war, Poland wants to help win peace with Iraq. I believe that the international community cannot leave Iraq without support.
They did an article in a major magazine, shortly after the war started. I think in '04. But they did an article which had me totally against the war in Iraq.
Destroying Iraq was the greatest strategic blunder this country has made in its history. Unless we change course, there's every reason to believe the Iraq War will end up changing the United States more than it will ever change Iraq.
The difference between the Bush I war against Iraq and the Bush II war against Iraq is that in the first one, we appealed to the sentiments and interests of the different groupings in the region and had them with us. In the second one, we did it on our own, on the basis of false premises, with extremely brutality and lack of political skill.
I want to break up the Wall Street banks. Hillary Clinton doesn't. I want to raise the minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour. She wants $12 an hour. I voted against the War in Iraq. She voted for the War in Iraq. I believe we should ban fracking. She does not. I believe we should have tax on carbon and deal aggressively with climate change. That is not her position.
I still believe that the Democrats have it right about health care, education, the war in Iraq and, yes the war on terror.
In my generation, thankfully, as somebody who served in the Afghanistan War, would have served in the Iraq War, if called to do so - was also strongly against the Iraq War, from the beginning - I'm so thankful that we live in a moment that we can honor the troops separately from policy.
We did not go to war in Afghanistan or in Iraq to, quote, 'impose democracy.' We went to war in both places because we saw those regimes as a threat to the United States.
I'm not saying that George W. Bush did everything right. But even if you take a skeptical view of his Iraq war, [Barack] Obama made the more serious error of withdrawing his troops from Iraq early.
The United States did not act in Iraq in 1988 when gas was being used on the Kurds or when gas was used in the Iranian-Iraq War.
I think what history will show is that one of the most tragic results of the war in Iraq will be that although Sharon, the Likudites, the Neoconservatives in our country, President Bush and the Democratic party thought the war in Iraq and destroying Saddam would benefit Israeli security, we're seeing absolutely that the war in Iraq has probably put Israeli security in a more tenuous condition than it's been in since the founding of the Israeli state.
Most people here agree that the rhetoric got overblown on both sides of the Atlantic before the Iraq war, and it was a disagreement among friends over the timing, not the substance, of the Iraq war.
I did not believe in the war. I thought it was wrong to go into any war. And I got to the war, and saw the Germans, and I changed my mind. I decided we were right going into World War II.
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