36 Paul Wolfowitz Quotes

Paul Wolfowitz quotes

1. 'There has been a good deal of comment-some of it quite outlandish-about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq. Some of the higher end predictions we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark. It is hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army-hard to imagine.'

2. Firing employees, that's unfortunately a part of doing business. [1]

3. 'I think one has to say it's not just simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable, but removing the sanctuaries, removing the support systems, ending states who sponsor terrorism. And that's why it has to be a broad and sustained campaign. It's not going to stop if a few criminals are taken care of.'

4. 'I can't imagine anyone here wanting to spend another $30 billion to be there for another 12 years.'

5. 'I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq. Those who want to come and help are welcome. Those who come to interfere and destroy are not.'(2003)

6. '...the importance of leadership and what it consists of: not lecturing and posturing and demanding, but demonstrating that your friends will be protected and taken care of, that your enemies will be punished, and that those who refuse to support you will regret having done so.' [2]

7. 'Fuck you.'

8. 'There's a lot of money to pay for this. It doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money. We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.'

9. 'There's definitely a rule in the Convention against humiliating prisoners and I'd have to see exactly the interview to see whether that in itself violated the Convention, but the Convention is very clear that prisoners have got to be treated properly. We are treating the Iraqi prisoners extremely well. In fact I think they get good food and shelter and they're free from the horrible commanders they used to work for. I think most of them are much happier, frankly.'

10. 'We know that in Basra and in the other cities the people do not want to repeat the experience of 12 years ago where they rise up against Saddam and then they're slaughtered. But before we take care of the killers that are left behind in those cities, we've got to take care of the regime. It's almost like cutting off the head of the snake and then the rest of the body will go.'

11. 'This word imminent keeps coming up. The President never said that there was an imminent threat.' --February 6, 2004 on the Roger Hedgecock Show [3]

12. 'The terrorists in Iraq believe their attacks on innocent people will weaken our resolve. They believe we will run from a challenge. They are mistaken. Americans are not the running kind.'

1. You cant win if youre chasing the wrong problem.

2. You can't win if you're chasing the wrong problem.

3. We are already seeing a degree of instability in the world because Obama seems to have consciously wanted to step back. Donald Trump is going to be "Obama squared," a more extreme version of the same thing.

4. I certainly don't like a label that suggests I believe that the military is the solution to most of the world's problems.

5. For the private sector to flourish, special privilege must give way to equal opportunity and equal risk for all.

6. Islamic State is mainly a direct result of the failure in Syria. That's where IS has grown. That's where IS spread from.

7. I think one has to say it's not just simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable, but removing the sanctuaries, removing the support systems...

8. I told my father I had to try political science for a year. He thought I was throwing my life away.

9. It's wonderful that so many people want to contribute to fighting aids or malaria. But, if somebody isn't paying attention to the overall health system in the country, a whole lot of money can be wasted.

10. Jobs are a priority for every country. Doing more to improve regulation and help entrepreneurs is the key to creating jobs - and more growth.

11. I certainly think it's important to speak up and say how unacceptable Donald Trump is. I'm always more than willing to do that.

12. Support for peaceful reform by the people themselves is the right way to promote democracy, not the use of force.

13. Someone once said that history has more imagination than all the scenario writers in the Pentagon, and we have a lot of scenario writers here. No one ever wrote a scenario for commercial airliners crashing into the World Trade Center.

14. Iraq has no history of ethnic conflict.

15. Poles understand perhaps better than anyone the consequences of making toothless warnings to brutal tyrants and terrorist regimes.

16. It's a very bad thing when people exterminate other people, and people persecute minorities.

17. I'm not sure the oil producers are enjoying real growth. That troubles me. For experience has shown that oil can be more of a curse than a blessing. And not only in Africa.

18. History is just littered with problems that were solved that were supposed to be impossible.

19. That sense of what happened in Europe in World War II has shaped a lot of my views.

20. The only way you can be comfortable about Donald Trump's foreign policy, is to think he doesn't really mean anything he says.

21. I think Obama sees everything through one lens. Doing nothing in the face of the slaughter in Syria is not only shameful, it is unrealistic. This approach leaves Syria as a broken country and a breeding ground for extremists for decades.

22. I have always had a tendency to keep enlarging problems which I personally think is the way the world works... that seeing anything one dimensionally on the kinds of political, sort of big issues of human progress is going to be a distorted view of things, which is why over my career I have gone seemingly from subject to subject to subject.

23. I think it's a mistake to rely too much on any one economic factor. It's why investors try to spread their portfolio round.

24. The Western alliance should have supported the Sunni opposition against the Assad regime from the beginning. As far as Iraq is concerned, if it had stayed stable the way it was in 2008, IS would not have been able to expand in Iraq the way they did. The mistake was that Barack Obama withdrew the armed forces from Iraq too fast.