Michael Totten Quotes

108 Sourced Quotes

We can only imagine the violent convulsions that will wrack the continent if something on the scale of 9/11 ever happens on that side of the ocean. And it's more likely to happen over there in the short and medium term than it is over here. Europe is already under much greater attack than the United States, and it has a far larger problem with Islamic radicalization.

Michael Totten
Iraq has never been a coherent nation-state; arguably, it wouldn't exist if the British Empire hadn't installed the Kingdom of Iraq in 1932. Its three biggest communities—Sunni Arabs, Shi'a Arabs and Kurds¬—have proven themselves incapable of living together in peace. The country will probably never be both democratic and stable within its current borders. Splitting Iraq into its three constituent parts would be better for the people who live there. It would be better for us, too, insofar as this separation would prevent the kind of unstable anarchy that breeds both Sunni and Shia militias, including ISIS.

Michael Totten
Nothing has actually changed except the American mood. Using ground troops in Syria and Iraq is no better or worse an idea after San Bernardino that it was before. The downsides are the same and at this point should be obvious. Lives will be lost, and some of them will be ours. American soldiers can't fix what ails the Middle East. Sure, they can overthrow dictators. They can kill terrorists and push them out of territory. But eliminating the appeal of a fascistic ideology is something else entirely. Replacing a totalitarian regime with some kind of functioning democracy in lands riven by ancient sectarian hatreds and hobbled by political and religious extremism is something else entirely.

Michael Totten
Beijing wants to impose its rule on Taiwan like it has in Hong Kong, Tibet and East Turkestan. If any half-way moral and sensible person had their way, the reverse would happen and Taiwan would export its democratic Chinese model to its 900-pound cousin. That's probably what will eventually happen anyway, even if China militarily conquers Taiwan in the meantime.

Michael Totten
Lebanon and Iraq are the two most sectarian countries in the Arab world.

Michael Totten
And at least the U.S. got something out of the deal. At least our people are still among the living when they come home... Iran committed three criminal acts against American citizens and paid no price. We put kidnappers in prison for a very long time in this country, but the Iranian government was rewarded. What's to stop that government from doing it again? Nothing. Why should the Iranian government stop? Kidnapping and ransoming hostages works. And the regime is already gearing up to do it again.

Michael Totten
It's astonishing. It's probably the most pro-American place in the world. Certainly the most pro-American place I've ever been.

Michael Totten
A black man named Tim Scott was just elected senator in a state-wide race in South Carolina, and he's a Republican.

Michael Totten
Extra work for no pay in Cuba? Cubans are hardly paid anyway. Most of them work for the state and earn a maximum wage of twenty dollars a month. Cuba's maximum wage is less than one percent of America's minimum wage. So they're already working for free. What difference does a couple more hours make?

Michael Totten
Ban guns in stores and at gun shows all you want—it will affect law-abiding citizens, not terrorists. Anything and everything banned by governments just moves to the black market, from guns and drugs to prostitution. According to the National Observatory for Delinquency, the number of illegal weapons in France has been increasing by double-digit percentages for years. Criminals and terrorists don't need to pass background checks, nor do they need Wal-mart. They buy their guns on the street.

Michael Totten
Saudi Arabia is the most backward and medieval society in the entire world outside ISIS and Taliban-occupied territory. Tehran is like Amsterdam compared with Riyadh despite the Iranian government's theocratic regulations and draconian enforcers.

Michael Totten
Their absolute monarchy isn't drastically different from the ISIS 'caliphate' in Syria and Iraq except that Riyadh plays well with others diplomatically and pushes back hard against Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Saudis do so for entirely self-interested reasons, of course. They don't care about human rights any more than the Iranians do. They're the world biggest proponents of hard-line Sunni fanaticism. The only reason they're bothered by ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood is because ISIS and the Brotherhood threaten the Saudi royal family's stranglehold on absolute power.

Michael Totten
The overwhelming majority of Sanders supporters have no memory of Soviet totalitarianism or the Berlin Wall; they know nothing of a world in which the United States was not the world's only superpower, a world where, if America had slipped, human rights and democratic government might have been eclipsed almost everywhere. The Sanders delegates, when they get older, likely won't take pride, as Biden does, in America's military strength. Their lives, and their generational experience of history, are drastically different. And the Democratic Party—and the Republican Party, too—will have to reckon with this.

Michael Totten
Even hotels are asking guests to bring their own, which is almost impossible unless they're coming in from abroad. Violent crime has spread throughout the country, even to rural areas. Police officers don't even attempt to suppress or solve crime, partly because they're too busy protecting the crooked and oppressive government from its furious subjects, but also because crime is as ubiquitous in Venezuela right now as the heat and humidity.

Michael Totten
A democratic Iran would be a natural ally of the United States while the Saudis, with their popularly backed medieval system, are natural enemies. At some point the U.S. will pivot, and the pivot will likely be permanent, but until the clerical regime in Tehran reforms itself out of all recognition or is overthrown from below, we're stuck with the awkward and ailing alliance we have. Let's try not to squander it further.

Michael Totten
At least the Russian Socialist Realists were talented artists. They produced totalitarian propaganda, yes, but they did it competently. Their paintings are interesting and engaging, and not just because they're curious historical artifacts.

Michael Totten
There are five times as many Muslims in the United States as there are in Belgium, but the United States is not a hotbed of homegrown Islamic extremism. We've suffered some acts of terrorism since 9/11—the mass shooting in San Bernardino, the Boston Marathon bombing and the massacre at Fort Hood. If American Muslims and European Muslims were equally predisposed to jihadism, we'd experience roughly five times as many attacks. But we don't, mostly because Muslims feel more at home in the United States than they do in Europe.

Michael Totten
Colombia's scenery is spectacular, its literary and arts scene world class, its biodiversity unmatched by any nation on earth. While it still has a moderately high crime rate in some areas, the homicide rate is now as low as Portland, Oregon's. It's almost as if whatever dark force consumed Colombia for so many decades picked up and moved to the country next door.

Michael Totten