Political Quotes

“Madam President, this week officials from all 31 of our NATO allies are going to be here in Washington for what is referred to as the NATO summit. At that summit, we will be celebrating 75 years of the most successful military alliance in modern history. And why do I call it the most successful military alliance? I mean that after two devastating world wars about 20 years apart--and those wars brought incredible bloodshed and destruction to Europe--now, we have had almost 80 years of relative peace in Europe. No European NATO member has been invaded. Now, we take it for granted that most of Europe is peaceful, but that was not the case before NATO arrived. Remember that the Soviet Union, after World War II, quickly exerted domination over the countries that it occupied at that time. But the U.S.S.R. wasn't satisfied with that situation. So many people expected war to break out in Europe at some point during the Cold War, but it did not. Thank God, no war happened. The Soviet Union helped launch wars in Asia and violent revolutions in Africa and Latin America. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan, but the U.S.S.R. did not dare touch those countries that were under the NATO umbrella. The strongest defense resulted in peace. NATO was not the result of some idealistic dream. Rather, NATO was a very practical response to the hard lessons learned of two World Wars that the United States tried its best to stay out of those wars as long as it could.…”