Elliott Abrams Quotes

You are not practicing Judaism if you celebrate Christmas.

- Elliott Abrams

The United States and its Gulf allies, some of who are actively funding rebel groups in Syria, should undertake a serious joint review of Jordan's needs and then act together to meet them.

- Elliott Abrams

There's always Tunisia. Amid the smoking ruins of the Middle East, there is that one encouraging success story.

- Elliott Abrams

Tunisia was not for the United States an important country in the way, let's say, Algeria was because of its gas, because of its size, because of its struggle against terrorism that sometimes turned bloody.

- Elliott Abrams

The courage of the Syrian protesters is remarkable, for they face prison, torture, or death every time they lift a banner.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

The U.S. has the power to block all anti-Israel moves in the Security Council, not just some of them, and to do so without agreeing to unfair, damaging compromises.

- Elliott Abrams

Thousands of members of Congress have come and gone over the years, their individual achievements hidden in committee reports, private compromises, amendments pushed through or blocked, and innumerable, unnoticed meetings.

- Elliott Abrams

The U.A.E. is a firm ally of the United States and deserves better treatment than it received in the Dubai Ports World fiasco in 2006.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

The early reviews of Dick Cheney's memoir have not evaluated the book, but instead have used its publication as an occasion for attacks on Cheney and his record, with general assaults on George W. Bush's administration thrown in for good measure.

- Elliott Abrams

America's relations with complex Middle Eastern states such as Egypt are often difficult.

- Elliott Abrams

Gadhafi's vicious regime has left Libya far worse than he found it on the day of his coup in 1969.

- Elliott Abrams

Terrorism exploded after the Camp David talks broke down in 2000 because the Palestinians' leader at the time, Yasser Arafat, supported it.

- Elliott Abrams

It is a natural goal of Iran to try and expel the Fifth Fleet from Bahrain.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

First impressions matter. Experts say we size up new people in somewhere between 30 seconds and two minutes.

- Elliott Abrams

Harry Truman, who was a Bible-believing Christian Zionist, defied the secretary of state he so admired, George C. Marshall, and won a place in Israel's history by recognizing the new state 11 minutes after it declared its independence in 1948.

- Elliott Abrams

For the entire first term, Obama and his people blamed Bush for everything - which is another way of saying they felt Bush and the Bush years were the inescapable reference point for everything they were themselves doing.

- Elliott Abrams

If you say to the White House, 'Obama has been very unfriendly to Israel,' they say, 'What do you mean? It's the best military-to-military relationship ever.' And that part is true.

- Elliott Abrams

While foreign competitors, French or Japanese or German, merrily bid for contracts abroad, American companies find themselves tangled in a web of legislation designed to express disapproval, block trade in certain commodities, or perhaps deny resources to disfavored or hostile regimes.

- Elliott Abrams

In Iran, there is no freedom of the press, no freedom of speech, no independent judiciary, no free elections. There is no freedom of religion - not even for Shiites, who are forced by Iran's theocracy to adhere to one narrow set of official rules.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

Now in its third year in office, the Obama Administration has never championed the cause of human rights. Its slow reaction in June 2009 to the stealing of the election in Iran and the birth of the 'Green Movement' there, and its delay in backing the rebellions in Egypt, Libya, and Syria, are evidence of this problem.

- Elliott Abrams

One good way of measuring the mood in Israel is just how alert or relaxed the guards at every restaurant entrance appear to be.

- Elliott Abrams

The United States treated Gaddafi as an enemy due to his support for terrorism against us, until a rapprochement of sorts began under Pres. George W. Bush at the very end of 2003.

- Elliott Abrams

Moammar Gaddafi, who has called himself the 'Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,' should go down in history with the Emperor Bokassa and Idi Amin as a grotesque reminder of why people have the right to change their government.

- Elliott Abrams

Scandinavia is boring. People living there apparently have little to do. And as European history teaches, when there is nothing much to do, you may as well amuse yourself by attacking the Jews.

- Elliott Abrams

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

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

Israel will not and should not leave until it is clear that the West Bank can be policed by Palestinians and that the region will not be a source of terrorism against Israel, as Gaza and South Lebanon became when Israel left there.

- Elliott Abrams

The Middle East that Obama inherited in 2009 was largely at peace, for the surge in Iraq had beaten down the al Qaeda-linked groups. U.S. relations with traditional allies in the Gulf, Jordan, Israel and Egypt were very good. Iran was contained, its Revolutionary Guard forces at home.

- Elliott Abrams

Obama's foreign policy is strangely self-centered, focused on himself and the United States rather than on the conduct and needs of the nations the United States allies with, engages with, or must confront.

- Elliott Abrams

At the height of the Cold War, when Ronald Reagan was president, the Soviets and their allies and satellites did not shirk human rights debates with the West. They had their arguments ready.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

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

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

The Obama administration has been trying out a new policy toward Syria since the day it came to office. The Bush cold shoulder was viewed as a primitive reaction, now to be replaced by sophisticated diplomacy. Outreach would substitute for isolation.

- Elliott Abrams

Reformist kings can save their dynasties now by helping their countries move smoothly into democracy, or they will end their years in exile like the Russian aristocrats of a century earlier.

- Elliott Abrams

Syria's population is 74% Sunni Muslim.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

It seems clear to me that the Obama Administration has no human rights policy. That is, while in some inchoate sense they would like respect for human rights to grow around the world, as all Americans would, they have no actual policy to achieve that goal - and they subordinate it to all their other policy goals.

- Elliott Abrams

The Arab monarchies, especially Jordan and Morocco, are more legitimate than the false republics, with their stolen elections, regime-dominated courts and rubber-stamp parliaments.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

Can Israelis be wistful? It is not the characteristic we usually associate with them; more typically they are said to be tough, sweet, angry, thoughtful, demanding - not wistful.

- Elliott Abrams

Al Qaeda's message that violence, terrorism and extremism are the only answer for Arabs seeking dignity and hope is being rejected each day in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and throughout the Arab lands.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

Egypt needs law and order in Sinai to save the tourist industry in Sharm el-Sheik and prevent the area from becoming a base for terrorists that will target Egypt itself, as well as Jordan and Israel.

- Elliott Abrams

President Bush was disgusted by the Assad regime's oppression of the Syrian people as well as its support for terrorism, interference in Lebanon, and encouragement of jihadist attacks on Americans in Iraq.

- Elliott Abrams

Bahai Iranians are barred from holding government jobs, their children are excluded from the nation's university system, their marriages are not recognized and their cemeteries and holy places have been desecrated. It is government policy to incite hatred of Bahais in the official media.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

The ultimate goal is to change Syria's behaviour on a variety of issues - on its interference in Lebanese internal affairs, on its support for Palestinian terrorist groups that oppose the Palestinian Authority, on, most importantly, acting as a land bridge between Iran and Hezbollah, where Hezbollah gets all its arms.

- Elliott Abrams

In 2004, President Bush gave Prime Minister Sharon certain guarantees about American policy, but the Obama administration treated those as a kind of private letter having no binding policy impact.

- Elliott Abrams

Peace in the Middle East has been on the Obama administration's mind from the beginning. Two days after his inauguration, the president traveled to the State Department to announce the appointment of George Mitchell as his Middle East peace negotiator.

- Elliott Abrams

The logic of collective security is flawless, provided it can be made to work under the conditions prevailing on the international scene... The odds, however, are strongly against such a possibility.

- Elliott Abrams

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

- Elliott Abrams

We need to understand that an open society and free speech and press... really are the best weapons against al Qaeda and extremism.

- Elliott Abrams

A great nation like the United States has many and varied interests, and we need both to do business with tyrants and to engage constantly in multilateral diplomacy.

- Elliott Abrams

The debate over same sex 'marriage' has engaged the heartfelt feelings and convictions of millions of Americans.

- Elliott Abrams

Cheney's memoir is not about 9/11, or solely about Bush's administration, but about his entire life and political career.

- Elliott Abrams

The Obama administration has vastly expanded the use of armed drones and concentrated a great deal of diplomatic effort on building and maintaining alliances that share information about terrorists, provide access to get near them, and then strike against them.

- Elliott Abrams

At Camp David in 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat 94 percent of the West Bank; ten years later, Ehud Olmert offered Abbas 93.6 percent with a one-to-one land swap.

- Elliott Abrams

In the Bill Clinton years, the foreign leader who visited the White House most often was Yasser Arafat - 13 times.

- Elliott Abrams

The Arab view that someone should bomb Iran and stop it from developing nuclear weapons is familiar to anyone who meets privately with Arab leaders, especially in the Gulf.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

Tunisia is small - just ten million, no great natural resources.

- Elliott Abrams

Nineteen-seventy-nine had been a year of American setbacks around the globe. Before the year began, Cuban troops were already roaming Angola, and a pro-Communist regime ruled Ethiopia.

- Elliott Abrams

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

- Elliott Abrams

Every Israeli government since 1967, of left or right, has asserted that Jerusalem is Israel's capital and has allowed Israeli Jews to build there.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

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

- Elliott Abrams

Opponents of U.S. sanctions have made 'unilateral sanctions' their special target. They argue that sanctions observed by many nations would be much more effective. True enough. Far better for trade with an outlaw regime to be restricted by many nations than by just one.

- Elliott Abrams

Sometimes the results of a first free election will find the moderates so poorly organized that extreme groups can eke out a victory, as Hamas did when it gained a 44-to-41 percent margin in the Palestinian election of 2006.

- Elliott Abrams

The Egyptian military and the government of Israel have long had a common interest in maintaining order and fighting terrorism in Sinai.

- Elliott Abrams

On the human rights side, administration policy has been marked by indifference. When the people of Iran flooded the streets to protest the theft of their presidential election in June 2009, President Obama was silent for 11 days.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

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

- Elliott Abrams

U.S.-Israel relations are often depicted as an extended honeymoon, but that's a false image.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

As the Palestinian leadership never seems to pay any penalty for its words, America's seriousness about the peace process is in doubt.

- Elliott Abrams

Times change. Cable news and the Internet alone have transformed the way outreach to the American people can be accomplished.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

Like all forms of collective security, multilateral sanctions require a unanimity rarely achieved in international politics.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

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

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

Libya as a country is a relatively new concept. The period of Libya as a modern nation really starts after World War II.

- Elliott Abrams

In the spring of 2007, Israeli intelligence brought to Washington proof that the Assad regime in Syria was building a nuclear reactor along the Euphrates - with North Korean help. This reactor was a copy of the Yongbyon reactor the North Koreans had built, and was part of a Syrian nuclear weapons program.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

Tunisian liberals say that the U.S. Embassy in Tunis is unengaged with their efforts to make sure the Tunisian model remains one of expanding freedom.

- Elliott Abrams

Huge numbers of embassy cables are labeled 'unclassified' or 'limited official use' and deal with mundane matters.

- Elliott Abrams

The United States should help strengthen nongovernmental humanitarian agencies working in Sudan so that they can handle an increased flow of aid.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

I first met Kim Dae Jung when he was a Korean dissident whose life was threatened by the military regime ruling in Seoul. I was Ronald Reagan's Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, and Kim was directed to me because the East Asia Bureau at the State Department had long shunned him.

- Elliott Abrams

There's been an Israeli position, which is 'We love Mubarak,' that permeates their whole society, the political class. That certainly differs from many of us in the pro-Israel camp in the United States.

- Elliott Abrams

On June 19, 1981, a vigorously healthy Justice Potter Stewart resigned from the Supreme Court at the age of 66.

- Elliott Abrams

The war on drugs is not being won, and it continues to threaten stability and democracy not only in the Andes but throughout the Caribbean as well, where tiny police and military forces are outclassed by the sophisticated equipment in the hands of traffickers passing through the region on the way to their market in this country.

- Elliott Abrams

It's time to bury the unreal, failed 'realism' of those who have long thought that dictators brought stability.

- Elliott Abrams

It is a keen measure of the fall of American influence in the region when a Palestinian leader responds to intense American pressure to go to the negotiating table by waiting to see if Arab League foreign ministers will let him take that step.

- Elliott Abrams

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

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

If the president of the United States says that attacks on civilians, starvation, and denial of religious freedom in Sudan are important international issues, they become so.

- Elliott Abrams

Mass killing has very clearly not been eliminated, nor has the 'international community' developed a response that will avert it or bring it to a quick end.

- Elliott Abrams

Obviously, every dictator pays a great deal of attention to who is running the army. There's always a base right outside the capitol to protect the head of government.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

Two presidents pursued human rights policies that were serious and effective: Reagan and George W. Bush. They understood that American support for human rights activists is a moral imperative for us and also makes the world safer for us.

- Elliott Abrams

Iran exports about 2.2 million barrels a day.

- Elliott Abrams

What does 'politicizing intelligence' mean? Using intel, or more often, partial intel, to produce an effect in line with White House policies rather than giving a full picture of a particular situation.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

I don't think a Palestinian state is going to be created at a conference table; it will be created on the ground in the West Bank, and some day, a peace conference will ratify that which has been built on the ground.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

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

- Elliott Abrams

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

- Elliott Abrams

The threat that Syria might transfer more advanced weapons to Hezbollah has existed for a long time.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

Reagan did not wait out the Soviets; he beat them.

- Elliott Abrams

Being an Arab leader has its rewards: the suite at the Waldorf-Astoria during the United Nations General Assembly, travel in your own plane, plenty of cash, even job security - whether kings, sheiks or presidents, with or without elections, most serve for life.

- Elliott Abrams

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

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

The anchors of the Arab consensus have long been Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and both are now weakened forces in Arab politics and diplomacy.

- Elliott Abrams

History may someday record that the Arab awakening that began with the Arab revolt of 1916 against the Ottomans ended about a century later with a whimper.

- Elliott Abrams

Arab states continue to send the Palestinians gifts of extravagant rhetoric and countless Arab League resolutions - but not much cash.

- Elliott Abrams

Every Arab 'republic' has been a republic of fear, but only Saddam Hussein's Iraq surpassed the Assads' Syria in number of victims.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

When you work in the White House you talk to the White House staff all day, so you're talking to the guy who handles the congressional liaison and the guy who's handling domestic politics and the guy who's handling the American economy and so forth.

- Elliott Abrams

Dubai must crack down on rampant smuggling, and the U.A.E. federal government has significantly stepped up pressure.

- Elliott Abrams

The fake republics are goners; the monarchies have a fighting chance. That's my conclusion after a short visit to the Middle East and discussions with officials and analysts there.

- Elliott Abrams

Israel's flexibility is dependent on its sense of security.

- Elliott Abrams

Enlightened despots are mythical creatures; real despots seem more interested in stealing money or installing their sons after them.

- Elliott Abrams

The story of the Jews in the Bible is replete with incidents of their ingratitude to God for His gifts to them: incidents that just as repeatedly merit and receive punishment.

- Elliott Abrams

In public, an admission of technological inadequacy would be too embarrassing.

- Elliott Abrams

While we use American power to fight hard for democracy against extremism on both left and right, our critics seem suspicious of any assertion of United States power or influence against any government or group that claims to be on the left.

- Elliott Abrams

Elections matter, but how much they matter depends entirely on how free, open and fair they are.

- Elliott Abrams

I grew up in Queens, in New York City, in a middle class Jewish family. My mother was a public school teacher, my father was a lawyer. They were Democrats - kind of middle-of-the-road democrats.

- Elliott Abrams

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

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

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

- Elliott Abrams

The presence of jihadis in Syria should be no surprise.

- Elliott Abrams

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

- Elliott Abrams

Denmark has long been regarded as one of the world's most attractive nations, for citizens and tourists alike. My own visits there, years ago as a student, were delightful.

- Elliott Abrams

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

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

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

- Elliott Abrams

During most of the Bush administration, human rights and democracy in Egypt were on the front burner.

- Elliott Abrams

An effective U.S. policy toward Sudan - one capable of changing the situation in the south and affecting the lives of its people - will require top-level attention and a great deal of energy. It should have three elements: aid, diplomacy, and financial disclosure.

- Elliott Abrams

For 22 years, Bandar bin Sultan was Saudi Arabia's influential, irrepressible ambassador in Washington.

- Elliott Abrams

The Obama administration appears to regard intelligence leaks and briefings more or less like briefings by the Democratic National Committee or White House flack Jay Carney. You use any information at hand, classified or not, and you spin it any way you like, fairly or not.

- Elliott Abrams

For many societies, the journey to modernity has been painful and costly.

- Elliott Abrams

In critical ways, Obama has reversed not just Bush policy but every president's approach to the world since the Second World War, save for that of his soulmate Jimmy Carter.

- Elliott Abrams

I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders - leaders not compromised by terror.

- Elliott Abrams

Is multilateralism nothing more than a dodge for simple inaction?

- Elliott Abrams

President Obama has never summarized the Obama Doctrine with such clarity, but here is what it would look like: 'I will undertake any military attack against our enemies, regardless of the risks and collateral damage, so long as it is over by the time I have to announce it.'

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

Gadhafi has established no national institutions, not even allowing a fake parliament of the Mubarak or Ben Ali variety that could perhaps be turned into something real.

- Elliott Abrams

Grasping the realities of the Middle East is never easy. This is not primarily because they change quickly, but because so much time, effort, and money is spent to prevent reality from breaking through.

- Elliott Abrams

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned, it seems, to direct the Middle East policy of the Obama administration.

- Elliott Abrams

While Argentina, Brazil, and Chile - what in textbooks used to be called the ABC countries - seem settled into democratic politics and free market economics, the Andean countries are in disarray.

- Elliott Abrams

You can easily see why the experience of Jews would be helpful if you're looking to get action on religious persecution.

- Elliott Abrams

I don't see kids with Palm Pilots. They are not common on college campuses, except among professors. Gen Xers don't need them. They are a phenomenon of the 50-something who can't remember if his broker's number ends in 1137 or 3317.

- Elliott Abrams

When freedom of the press is threatened, the United States should be leading efforts to protect it.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

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

- Elliott Abrams

The Erdogan government's first major step outside of the U.S. alliance was during the Bush Administration, when it wouldn't let Washington use Turkey as a launching ground for U.S. troops entering Iraq in 2003.

- Elliott Abrams

Pundits are used to analyzing the gap between what our ideals suggest and what our security interests require.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

The real crime of Hosni Mubarak is that he ruled for 30 years and left behind an Egypt where the Muslim Brotherhood is the single strongest player.

- Elliott Abrams

The notion that public service requires men and women of good character now seems quaint.

- Elliott Abrams

The Sandinistas are a tough bunch of guys, with a fabulous amount of Soviet Bloc equipment and Soviet Bloc advisers.

- Elliott Abrams

The Assad regime has lost the consent of the governed, and it is difficult to see how a replacement Alawite regime would be able to regain this consent.

- Elliott Abrams

Honduras was the original 'banana republic,' and its poverty remains extreme.

- Elliott Abrams

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

- Elliott Abrams

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

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

If you are trying to raise a child to be a Jew, then you have to create a sense of Jewish identity. You really weaken that sense of identity if you celebrate two religions.

- Elliott Abrams

Senator Kerry was fooled by Bashar al-Assad.

- Elliott Abrams

The devastation of the ancient Christian community in Iraq is well known.

- Elliott Abrams

It was simply impossible to support Carter for reelection in 1980 and easy for me to support Reagan. The Reagan campaign was happy to have Democratic support, and the Reagan administration was happy to have Democrats in it; they took the view that, after all, Reagan himself had been a Democrat, so it was not a strike against you.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

There isn't any way for the people of Nicaragua to find out what's going on in Nicaragua.

- Elliott Abrams

The Iron Dome is great for the U.S.

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

Pinochet took power in a 1973 military coup that the United States supported.

- Elliott Abrams

You can do a no-fly zone without ground forces.

- Elliott Abrams

I never said I had no idea about most of the things you said I said I had no idea about.

- Elliott Abrams

Terrorists that kill Americans don't get released.

- Elliott Abrams

There is no softer target in GOP primaries than the United Nations and foreign-aid spending.

- Elliott Abrams

The failure to set standards for Palestinian conduct hurts the cause of peace.

- Elliott Abrams

The United States should encourage Israel to take further steps to improve the Palestinian economy.

- Elliott Abrams

China has concluded that trade trumps all.

- Elliott Abrams

Obama is like the kid brother whose only standard for judging his own achievements is the records his big brother set.

- Elliott Abrams

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

- Elliott Abrams

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.

- Elliott Abrams

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

- Elliott Abrams

If you said to people you can cast a secret ballot on whether to turn back the clock and have Morsi in power again, I don't think very many people in Washington would turn back that clock.

- Elliott Abrams

America was not founded to improve health care or housing; it was founded for freedom.

- Elliott Abrams

Barack Obama's military triumphs will come neither in long wars nor even short ones, but in a series of raids.

- Elliott Abrams

I personally would not talk to a Jew for Jesus.

- Elliott Abrams

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

- Elliott Abrams

Does anyone believe that Kofi Annan scares Bashar Assad?

- Elliott Abrams

The Assad regime is quite reliant on oil exports.

- Elliott Abrams

Four years is a long time in politics.

- Elliott Abrams

I just don't understand how Kerry or Obama or anybody else thought Assad was going to change.

- Elliott Abrams

A Palestinian state will never be created by terror.

- Elliott Abrams

The best-armed and best-trained divisions of the Syrian army are Alawite.

- Elliott Abrams

Persecution of Christians is growing around the world, and Congress needs to pay more attention to it.

- Elliott Abrams

While all Alawites fear vengeance against their entire community should Assad fall, there are varying degrees of loyalty to the Assads.

- Elliott Abrams

The way for the Palestinians to get a state is to go ahead and build it.

- Elliott Abrams

Why are diplomatic cables secret at all?

- Elliott Abrams

Both Bibi and Obama realize that they are going to have to face the problem of Iran together.

- Elliott Abrams

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

- Elliott Abrams

Pessimism is rife in Israel.

- Elliott Abrams

At the United Nations, a lynch mob for Israel is always just a moment away.

- Elliott Abrams

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

- Elliott Abrams

The Pope is not a political figure.

- Elliott Abrams

There are no Muslim ghettos in the U.S.

- Elliott Abrams