“To be blunt, we went down that road in Iraq.”
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
2011, Address on interventions in Libya (March 2011)
Context: To be blunt, we went down that road in Iraq. Thanks to the extraordinary sacrifices of our troops and the determination of our diplomats, we are hopeful about Iraq’s future. But regime change there took eight years, thousands of American and Iraqi lives, and nearly a trillion dollars. That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya.