We may be so eager to protect the right to dissent that we lose sight of the difference between dissent and subversion. – Richard Perle
Law-abiding citizens value privacy. Terrorists require invisibility. The two are not the same, and they should not be confused. – Richard Perle
Right now, American law bars the admission of aliens suspected of terrorist activity – but not of terrorist sympathies. – Richard Perle
If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don’t try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now. – Richard Perle
Dictators must have enemies. They must have internal enemies to justify their secret police and external enemies to justify their military forces. – Richard Perle
Nor should we exclude the possibility that Islamic terrorism may begin to make common cause with Western political extremists of the far Left and far Right. – Richard Perle
The jealousy and resentment that animate the terrorists also affect many of our former cold war allies. – Richard Perle
Non-citizen terrorist suspects are not members of the American national community, and they have no proper claim on the rights Americans accord one another. – Richard Perle
George Tenet has been the director of central intelligence since 1997, time enough to have changed the Agency’s culture. He has failed. He should go. – Richard Perle
Acknowledge that a more closely integrated Europe is no longer an unqualified American interest. – Richard Perle
National sovereignty is an obligation as well as an entitlement. A government that will not perform the role of a government forfeits the rights of a government. – Richard Perle
In any event, the problem in Iran is much bigger than weapons. The problem is the terrorist regime that seeks the weapons. The regime must go. – Richard Perle
Dictatorships start wars because they need external enemies to exert internal control over their own people. – Richard Perle
We must do our utmost to preserve our British ally’s strategic independence from Europe. – Richard Perle
There is no doubt that, with the exception of a very small number of people close to a vicious regime, the people of Iraq have been liberated and they understand that they’ve been liberated. – Richard Perle
No operational commander should have to assign a soldier a task that could be done as well by a computer, a remote sensor, or an unmanned airplane. – Richard Perle
But if the UN cannot or will not revise its rules in ways that establish beyond question the legality of the measures the United States must take to protect the American people, then we should unashamedly and explicitly reject the jurisdiction of these rules. – Richard Perle
The lax multiculturalism that urges Americans to accept the unacceptable from their fellow citizens is one of this nation’s greatest vulnerabilities in the war on terror. – Richard Perle
Few governments in the world, for example, praise human rights more ardently than does the government of France, and few have a worse record of supporting tyrants and killers. – Richard Perle
The same European governments that hesitated to confront terrorists were more than prepared to oppose us. – Richard Perle
To stop terrorists before the strike, we must do three things: deny them entry into the country, curtail their freedom of action inside the country, and deprive them of material and moral support from within the country. – Richard Perle
