I don't think we would have had to be an occupying power if we had done the right thing in 1991.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Without the United States, there simply would not have been an armed uprising in our country.
And there was a movement afoot to take another year off, and if we had been able to do that, and rethink everything, I think when we came back it would have been very different.
The United States came out of the 1990s, if anything, in an even greater position of hegemony and preeminence than it was at the beginning of the 1990s.
In the '90s, there was scant presidential leadership and insufficient domestic political mobilization for foreign policy grounded in human rights.
If it had been our intention to take Iraq, if it had been our intention to destroy the country, if it had been our intention to overrun the country, we could have done it unopposed.
When Congress passed the Authorization for the Use of Military Force immediately after the 9/11 attacks, no one could have imagined this authorization would continue to be the basis for American wars that persist a decade and a half later.
We had a military and political leadership at that period which was genuinely deluded.
It is certainly not unrealistic to think we could have elections by mid-year 2004 and when a sovereign government is installed - my job here will be done.
Sure, things could always have been done better, but I just wish people would drop their political hammers for a few weeks, as happened in 2001, and work on the problem at hand.
No doubt it was better to have become president than not.
No opposing quotes found.