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War: 2003. Iraq

Quotes

“America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.... She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standards of freedom.” (John Quincy Adams, 1821.)

“There is one and only one legitimate goal of United States foreign policy. It is a narrow goal, a nationalistic goal: the preservation of our national independence. Nothing in the Constitution grants that the president shall have the privilege of offering himself as a world leader. He is our executive; he is on our payroll; he is supposed to put our best interests in front of those of other nations. Nothing in the Constitution nor in logic grants to the president of the United States or to Congress the power to influence the political life of other countries, to ‘uplift’ their cultures, to bolster their economies, to feed their people, or even to defend them against their enemies.” (Ezra Taft Benson, America at the Crossroads, August 30, 1969.)

“We are bound to maintain public liberty, and, by example of our own system, to convince the world that order and law, religion and morality, the rights of conscience, the rights of persons, and the rights of property may all be preserved and secured.” (Daniel Webster)

“The management of foreign relations appears to be the most susceptible of abuse of all the trusts committed to a Government, because they can be concealed or disclosed, or disclosed in such parts and at such times as will best suit particular views; and because the body of the people are less capable of judging, and are more under the influence of prejudices, on that branch of their affairs, than of any other. Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.” (James Madison, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1798.)

“The Constitution will never reach its destiny through force. God's principles are taken by men because they are eternal and true and touch the divine spirit in men. This is the only true way to permanent world peace, the aspiration of men since the beginning. God never planted his Spirit, his truth, in the hearts of men from the point of a bayonet.” (J. Reuben Clark, The Constitution, Conference Report, April 6, 1957.)

“Every latter-day saint who supports the current war doctrine, should ask themselves ‘Did the Nephites ever pre-emptively strike their enemies? And when they did, what was the result?’” (M B, March 11, 2007.)

“If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.” (James Madison)

“Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.” (John Adams)

“I think both logic and our present situation demonstrate that you can’t give freedom to a people that are not ready and willing to defend it themselves. And if that’s the case, there’s no need to give it to them at all, for they are perfectly capable of giving it to themselves.

If there is sufficient virtue in a body of people to maintain freedom, there is sufficient virtue to establish it in the first place.” (M B, written regarding the Iraq war. October 5, 2007.)

“President Wilson had the full departure in mind [of the Founders doctrine of neutrality] when he declared: ‘Everybody’s business is our business.’ Since then we have leaped ahead along the anciently forbidden path.” (J. Reuben Clark, Let Us Have Peace, Church News, November 22, 1947.)

“In our course under the new gospel of interference with everything we do not like, we have gone forward and are going forward, as if we possessed all the good of human government, of human economic concept, of human comfort, and of human welfare, all of which we are to impose on the balance of the world,— a concept born of the grossest national egotism.” (J. Reuben Clark, Let Us Have Peace, Church News, November 22, 1947.)

“Yet, to repeat, we have entered into new fields to impose our will and concepts on others. This means we must use force, and force means war, not peace. What has our apostasy from peace cost us?” (J. Reuben Clark, Let Us Have Peace, Church News, November 22, 1947.)

“I believe American manhood is too valuable to be sacrificed on foreign soil for foreign issues and causes.” (J. Reuben Clark, Let Us Have Peace, Church News, November 22, 1947.)

“I believe that permanent peace will never come into the world from the muzzle of a gun. Guns and bayonets will, in the future as in the past, bring truces, long or short, but never peace that endures.” (J. Reuben Clark, Let Us Have Peace, Church News, November 22, 1947.)

“In my view, our whole international course and policy is basically wrong, and must be changed if peace is to come. Our policy has brought us, and pursued, will continue to bring us, only the hatred of nations now — and we cannot thrive on that, financially or spiritually — and certain war hereafter, with a list of horrors and woes we do not now even surmise.” (J. Reuben Clark, Let Us Have Peace, Church News, November 22, 1947.)

“We are a warlike people, easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord. When enemies rise up, we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel—ships, planes, missiles, fortifications—and depend on them for protection and deliverance. When threatened, we become antienemy instead of pro-kingdom of God; we train a man in the art of war and call him a patriot, thus, in the manner of Satan’s counterfeit of true patriotism.” (President Spencer W. Kimball, Ensign, June 1976.)

“The Iraqi regime militarily remains fairly weak. It doesn't have the capacity it had 10 or 12 years ago. It has been contained. And even though we have no doubt in our mind that the Iraqi regime is pursuing programs to develop weapons of mass destruction -- chemical, biological and nuclear — I think the best intelligence estimates suggest that they have not been terribly successful.” (Secretary of State Colin Powell, four months prior to 9/11 May 2001.)

“Saddam Hussein did not possess stockpiles of illicit weapons at the time of the U.S. invasion in March 2003 and had not begun any program to produce them, a CIA report concludes.

“In fact, the long-awaited report, authored by Charles Duelfer, who advises the director of central intelligence on Iraqi weapons, says Iraq's WMD program was essentially destroyed in 1991 and Saddam ended Iraq's nuclear program after the 1991 Gulf War.” (Report: No WMD stockpiles in Iraq, CNN, October 7, 2004.)

“1,750 experts have visited 1,200 potential WMD sites and have come up empty-handed.

“It is important to emphasize that central fact because the administration's case for going to war against Iraq rested on the twin arguments that Saddam Hussein had existing stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and that he might give weapons of mass destruction to al Qaeda to attack us.” (Senator Carl Levin Report: No WMD stockpiles in Iraq, CNN, October 7, 2004.)