Elliott Abrams quotes:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

You are not practicing Judaism if you celebrate Christmas.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.'

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

There are no Muslim ghettos in the U.S.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Today's status symbol is the Palm Pilot; tomorrow's is not having one, because you have a whole staff keeping track of you. It's like a winter coat in Washington: The ultimate status symbol isn't cashmere, it's no coat at all on the snowiest day of the year - because that means you have a car and driver waiting for you, so why do you need a coat?

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.

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

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.

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

China has concluded that trade trumps all.

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

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.

Syria's population is 74% Sunni Muslim.

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

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.

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.

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.

Pessimism is rife in Israel.

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

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

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

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

A Palestinian state will never be created by terror.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.