James Dobbins Quotes (11 Quotes)

That we have had to spend several years relearning these lessons is a measure of the U.S. defense establishment's failure to take counterinsurgency seriously after the American retreat from Vietnam.

There has been a need for the bank to be in Iraq.

It demonstrates that we're determined to play a continuing diplomatic, political and economic role here in assisting Afghanistan to make the transition from war to peace,

The United States has oscillated between extremes of attention and neglect in Haiti. The basic problem is that our focus has never been continuous.

We are here, and we are here to stay, ... I declare this mission open for business.

The Bonn Agreement, which was negotiated four years ago, has been a remarkably successful road map toward Afghanistan's political evolution, in which all of its benchmarks have been met more or less on schedule.

The most important force in Iraq for breaking up the country and preventing a strong central government isn't the insurgency, it's the Kurds, and the second most important force is the Shiites.

Voters are not looking for creative, forward-looking candidates, they are looking for people who they think can protect them. They fall back on the familiar and the powerful. The same thing happened in postwar Bosnia, where the parties that fed the conflict in the first place got most of the vote.

There was a real sense of solidarity among the neighboring states, a desire to see this work and send a signal to all the Afghan factions that they were no longer to receive assistance if they did not adopt this accord.

We're going to have to face the fact that there are strong centrifugal forces in Iraq that have the potential of tearing the country apart.

It was well known by everyone, including the US government, that the system as constructed invited kickbacks,