Foreign Policy
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- The ongoing war in Afghanistan is being imposed on us, and Afghans are being sacrificed in it for someone else's interests. We are not blocking the interests of the United States or other major powers. But we are demanding that if you consider Afghanistan the place from which to advance your interests, then you should also pay attention to Afghanistan’s interests.
- I am very sad to see that the Olympic Games in Sochi, for which we have so long and anxiously prepared, will come to pass with less brilliance and passion because of this unfortunate initiative that was so hastily -- and I believe without thoughtful discussion -- adopted by parliament.
- I don’t have time to think about a false controversy. In the midst of all of the swirl about things like talking points, the administration’s been working very, very hard across the globe to review our security of our embassies and our facilities. That’s what we ought to be focused on.
- You know, I’ve never believed, in anything, that you had to have role models who looked like you to do something. If I’d been waiting for a black, female, soviet specialist role model, I’d be still waiting.
- And, as a consequence of the pressure that we've applied over the last couple of weeks, we have Syria -- for the first time -- acknowledging that it has chemical weapons, agreeing to join the convention that prohibits the use of chemical weapons, and the Russians -- their primary sponsors -- saying that they will push Syria to get all of their chemical weapons out. The distance that we've traveled over these couple of weeks is remarkable.
- Putin stepped in, but he didn’t step in to save Barack Obama. Putin stepped in to maximize Russian influence in the Middle East. That is, strategically, a defeat for the United States.
- Enough of this foreign fiasco distraction. Get back to work. It is time to bomb Obamacare.
- It ought to be a shock to all of us, as a nation and as a people. It ought to obsess us. It ought to lead to some sort of transformation. That's what happened in other countries when they experienced similar tragedies.
In the United Kingdom, in Australia, when just a single mass shooting occurred in those countries, they understood that there was nothing ordinary about this kind of carnage. They endured great heartbreak, but they also mobilized and they changed. And mass shootings became a great rarity. And yet, here in the United States, after the round the clock coverage on cable news, after the heartbreaking interviews with families, after all the speeches and all the punditry and all the commentary, nothing happens.
- No other advanced nation endures this kind of violence. None.
Here in America, the murder rate is three times what it is in other developed nations. The murder rate with guns is ten times what it is in other developed nations. And there's nothing inevitable about it. It comes about because of decisions we make or fail to make. And it falls upon us to make it different. - The foundations of equal rights are threatened by the hyper-sexualization that touched children between six and twelve years old.
- While the president is happy to negotiate with Vladimir Putin, he won't engage with congress.
- From our viewpoint, it seems absolutely absurd that the armed forces, the regular armed forces, which are on the offensive today and in some areas have encircled the so-called rebels and are finishing them off — that in these conditions they would start using forbidden chemical weapons, while realizing quite well that it could serve as a pretext for applying sanctions against them, including the use of force.