Political Quotes

“it is always a stimulating experience to hear the learned gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums] speak on any subject, particularly on this one. I would just like to respond to a few of the things he said. ``Choose no sides.'' That is the first rule of peacemaking. The first, most famous chooser of no sides was named Pontius Pilate, and he is legendary. ``I don't see any moral high ground,'' another good phrase in treating aggressor and victim identically. It seems to me the doctrine of moral equivalence ought to have gone out with the end of the cold war. That was Paul Warnke's idea of the Soviets and the United States being two hamsters on a treadmill. Unilateralism. Let me tell my colleagues, ``When Israel took out the nuclear reactor in Iraq, the whole world suffered from terminal ambivalence. They deplored the violation of protocol, and secretly they loved it. They loved it.'' Unilateralism, yes, blessed unilateralism. I suggest that there are all kinds of peace, and peacemaking is wonderful, but the peace of the morgue, the peace of the jailhouse, is not to be suffered, and America is too important and too moral a country to aver its eyes from genocide and ethnic cleansing, and so I hope and pray that the amendment offered by the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. McCloskey] is adopted, and the subsequent amendment, about which I will have more to say later, is defeated.”