Elliott Abrams Quotes

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

China has concluded that trade trumps all.

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.

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.

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

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

Pessimism is rife in Israel.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

A Palestinian state will never be created by terror.

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.

There are no Muslim ghettos in the U.S.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Terrorists that kill Americans don't get released.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Why are diplomatic cables secret at all?

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Does anyone believe that Kofi Annan scares Bashar Assad?

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