The Iraqis need help establishing a government. We have to provide them with security.
BRENT SCOWCROFTTo sum up, the position we took was that since we didn’t know the internal situation in Iraq nor Saddam Hussein, that our best bet was to take counsel from the people who did know him and who did deal with him.
More Brent Scowcroft Quotes
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Information technology has politicized the world’s population.
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My point was that removing Saddam should not have been our highest priority. Fighting terrorism should have been our number one concern, followed by the Palestinian peace process.
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If you look back at the first Gulf war, the Arabs sent forces, they sent money. So their interests in Iraq are clear, but they’re nowhere to be seen now. Why? Because right now, it’s dangerous to be seen as supporting the United States.
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But, if you believe we should go around the world overturning regimes to make little United States, I don’t agree with that, because I don’t think we’re capable of doing that.
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It’s not for nothing that the Iranians are known as rug merchants. They are.
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The radical elements in Islam are very dangerous.
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After all, we didn’t bring democracy to Germany in 1945; Hitler destroyed democracy there first.
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America has never seen itself as a national state like all others, but rather as an experiment in human freedom and democracy.
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America is stronger than any state probably since the Roman Empire. But we can’t do what used to be done with that kind of strength.
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Much of what we know about mathematics and trade comes from the Arabs. Then came stagnation, and now they’re the West’s whipping boy. This is a problem that cannot be solved overnight, and certainly not militarily.
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I’m afraid that the United States is more isolated today than at any other time in my memory.
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Progress is only possible if the United States and its allies work together.
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Who is the guarantor, if there is one, of a more stable world? It’s the United States.
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I don’t think the Chinese look out at the world and want to overturn the system.
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If Iraq were to descend into chaos, the Europeans would feel the effects just as much as we would.
BRENT SCOWCROFT