Elliott Abrams Quotes
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While Israelis do not care too much about Europeans moral judgments, the E.U. is an important market for them, and European sanctions of any kind would be harmful to Israel.
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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.
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For decades, the Arab states have seemed exceptions to the laws of politics and human nature. While liberty expanded in many parts of the globe, these nations were left behind, their 'freedom deficit' signaling the political underdevelopment that accompanied many other economic and social maladies.
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Immanuel Kant famously claimed that 'he who wills the ends wills the means,' but he never spent much time in Washington.
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The Obama administration rarely demonstrated the ability to shift gears and change policy in its first year. Even in the face of historic events such as the continuing demonstrations against Iran's regime, it stuck devotedly to prior plans.
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I just don't understand how Kerry or Obama or anybody else thought Assad was going to change.
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In Kuwait there is already a real, elected parliament with genuine power, but the prime minister is always a member of the ruling al-Sabah family. That must end.
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Israel bombed the Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007. What the Syrians did in response, nothing. Israel has killed a number of terrorist leaders in Syria. Response? Nothing.
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Palestine, as Icelanders see it, includes the Western Wall of the Second Temple, Judaism's holiest site.
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The failure to set standards for Palestinian conduct hurts the cause of peace.
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In Jordan, where the prime minister is always a commoner, the king has announced some new reforms that would tend to move the country toward a more democratic system: Notably, the prime minister would emerge from the victorious political party, not from back room conversations in the royal palace.
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In 2007, early in the improbable presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, the young first-term senator began a series of foreign-policy speeches that seemed too general to provide a guide to what he might do if elected.
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Libya as a country is a relatively new concept. The period of Libya as a modern nation really starts after World War II.
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Senator Kerry was fooled by Bashar al-Assad.
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The United States already has in place comprehensive trade sanctions against Sudan, imposed because of the regime's support for terrorism. While we maintain diplomatic relations, we do not staff our embassy there.
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Times change. Cable news and the Internet alone have transformed the way outreach to the American people can be accomplished.
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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.
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Henry M. Jackson, congressman and senator from 1941 until his death in 1983, achieved far greater renown than most legislators, ran for president in 1972 and 1976, and was for much of the 1970s and 1980s one of the most powerful men in America.
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I want to be the first guy to reverse a communist revolution.
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In most cases, cables are marked secret not because the U.S. requires it but because those speaking to us - the foreign leaders across the table - do. They are not keeping secrets from us, but from two other groups: their enemies and their subjects.
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America's relations with complex Middle Eastern states such as Egypt are often difficult.
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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.
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In public, an admission of technological inadequacy would be too embarrassing.
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In Arab capitals, the failure of the United States to stop Iran's nuclear program is understood as American weakness in the struggle for dominance in the Middle East, making additional cooperation from Arab leaders on Israeli-Palestinian issues even less likely.