Political Quotes

“Over 60 years ago, the United States President sent advisers to a nation in Asia. He did so because a regime that was perceived as friendly to U.S. interests, but which was, in fact, deeply corrupt and rotten, was threatened. He promised that those advisers would not engage in combat, that they were there to protect American military equipment. Years later, with 60,000 dead Americans and billions and billions of dollars expended, the helicopters lifted off from Saigon, and the Vietnamese regime fell. Today, another U.S. President is sending advisers to a nation in Asia and contemplating air strikes in a three-way civil war in Iraq. This President is doing it purportedly to preserve a nation which was the creation, as Secretary Albright says, of British and French diplomats lying to each other almost a hundred years ago. It is a Nation which, while we have paid gravely in blood and treasure to preserve, may not have the support of its own people. As usual, politics are intruding. The architects of the Iraq war under George W. Bush see the possibility of redemption for their mistakes, so unbelievably, they are accusing this President of losing Iraq. Let's be very clear: Iraq cannot be lost or won. A brutal dictator or the United States military can sit on top of conflicts between Sunni and Shiite and Saxon tribes that have roiled that society for centuries, but remove that dictator or remove the U.S. military, and those conflicts will reemerge.…”