We spend less time with each other now than we did during the presidency. When you're president, you're usually out and back in the same day - at least I was. I just came from a trip to the Middle East last week, where I was gone for five nights, and when I left, Laura [Bush] was out of town.
God told me to smite Osama bin Laden, so I invaded Afghanistan. Then He told me to smite Saddam Hussein, so I invaded Iraq. Now He wants me to work on the Middle East problem.
For decades, free nations tolerated oppression in the Middle East for the sake of stability. In practice, this approach brought little stability and much oppression, so I have changed this policy.
We thank you [the soldiers recently returned from the middle east] for your service.
A few years ago, they [Neandertals] were thought to be ancestral to anatomically modern humans, but now we know that modern humans appeared at least 100,000 years ago, much before the disappearance of the Neandertals. Moreover, in caves in the Middle East, fossils of modern humans have been found dated 120,000-100,000 years ago, as well as Neandertals dated at 60,000 and 70,000 years ago, followed again by modern humans dated at 40,000 years ago. It is unclear whether the two forms repeatedly replaced one another by migration from other regions, or whether they coexisted in some areas
On taking office in 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama put Israeli settlements at the center of U.S. policy in the Middle East.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned, it seems, to direct the Middle East policy of the Obama administration.
Look, miracles in the Middle East are a reality.
I think Syria is in a particularly sensitive geopolitical position in terms of the politics of the Middle East.
The Middle East is America's 'champagne room'. No matter how much you spend, you will still never get what you want.
Just saw a t-shirt at the gym said, body by torture. That's a lot less ironic if you're a political prisoner in the Middle East.
We owe $20 trillion, and we're a mess. And we've spent $6 trillion in the Middle East, according to a report that I just saw.And it's politicians like Secretary [Hillary] Clinton that have caused this problem.
I'm dealing with Mexico, I'm dealing with Argentina. We were dealing in this case with Mike Flynn. All this information gets put into The Washington Post and The New York Times, and I'm saying, what's going to happen when I'm dealing on the Middle East? We've got to stop it. That's why it's a criminal penalty.
The world is a total mess. Take a look at what's happening with Aleppo. Take a look what's happening in Mosul. Take a look what's going on in the Middle East. And people are fleeing and they're going into Europe and all over the place. The world is a mess.
We have spent, right now, $6 trillion in the Middle East, and America is falling apart. It's not right.
I don't want people to chop off the citizens' or anybody's heads in the Middle East, OK? Because they're Christian or Muslim or anything else.
In the Middle East - and this is prior to the migration - you had almost no chance of coming into the United States. Christians from Syria, of which there were many, many of their heads ... chopped off. If you were a Muslim from Syria, it was one of the easiest places to come in (to the U.S.). I thought that was deplorable.
I was against the war in Iraq because I said it's going to totally destabilize the Middle East, which it has. It has absolutely been a disastrous war, and by the way, perhaps almost as bad was the way Barack Obama got out. That was a disaster.
We have been there for 15 years in the Middle East, and much more than that probably. And we have spent probably $4 trillion, maybe more than that. And it's time to do something about it. And it's time to also knock ISIS out. You got to knock ISIS out.
The Middle East is totally destabilized. A total and complete mess.
We have done a tremendous disservice, not only to Middle East, we've done a tremendous disservice to humanity.
As I searched the atlas for somewhere to run to, Hugh made a case for his old stomping grounds. His first suggestion was Beirut, where he went to nursery school. His family left there in the midsixties and moved to the Congo. After that, it was Ethiopia, and then Somalia, all fine places in his opinion. 'Let's save Africa and the Middle East for when I decide to quit living,' I said.
Like most Americans, I hope and wish is that there is a peaceful resolution to the Middle East conflict. Unfortunately, there are extremists on both sides who oppose a peaceful resolution and instead choose violence.
I'm not naive. I know perfectly well that there isn't a single Arab or Muslim in the world who would say: There has to be a Jewish state in the Middle East.
Look at South Africa, the former Soviet Union, and the Middle East. They still have many problems, setbacks as well as breakthroughs, but basically changes have happened that were considered unthinkable a decade ago.
