Vietnam Quotes - Page 13

• Bill Klinton was the ultimate rock star as president. I don't think as a result of his presidency we will ever have a rock star as president again. In the same way that we will never get involved in another Vietnam.

  Joe Eszterhas

  Stars, Thinking, Rocks

  "Hardball" with Chris Matthews, "College Tour", www.nbcnews.com. October 9, 2002.

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• News footage came on the TV during dinner of bloody bodies coming back from battle in Vietnam, or the race riots in the South, people getting hosed in Selma, Alabama, or the Biafra war, where I got my name. In my household, it was explained and discussed with the children, as a way of educating us from when we first started grade school why racism and war were wrong, what this all really means.

  Jello Biafra

  Children, War, School

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• It could well be argued that the continuing rights abuses of the present Iraqi regime, if it is allowed to survive, will prove most distressing. This is beyond any doubt. But the West has been required to witness terrible scenes in China, Russia, Vietnam, East Timor, Cambodia, and many other parts of the world. It is simply not possible for the United States to impose humanity on a worldwide scale unless it is prepared to enter into permanent global war.

  Frederick Forsyth

  War, Russia, Rights

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• There's never been anything like the so-called Vietnam Syndrome: it's mostly a fabrication.

  Noam Chomsky

  Syndromes, Fabrication

  Interview with Matthew Tempest, www.theguardian.com. March 16, 2004.

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• I longed in many respects to actually be in Vietnam and be representing our country there and in some ways it was frustrating not to feel like I was there as part of the troops that were fighting in Vietnam.

  Mitt Romney

  Country, Fighting, Troops

  "Opinion A new Republican archetype" by Charles Pierce, www.theguardian.com. December 8, 2007.

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• We must never forget that if the war in Vietnam is lost ... the right of free speech will be extinguished throughout the world.

  Richard M. Nixon

  War, World, Speech

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• Today [ Sun Tzu] ideas are not widely applied, at least among Islamic dissidents, whose profligate use of indiscriminate terrorism appears to limit the appeal of their ideas rather than to "win hearts and minds," as the Vietminh and the National Liberation Front did in Vietnam so many decades ago.

  William J. Duiker

  Islamic, Heart, Winning

  Source: www.sonshi.com

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• Eisenhower managed to begin the Vietnam war by not following his normal instinct of staying out of mischief. In his memoirs, he tells us why we didn't honor the Geneva accords and hold elections in Vietnam: because some 80 percent of the country would have voted for Ho Chi Minh. This is very candid. The sort of thing one might have found in Stalin'smemoirs, had he not made ghosts even of ghosts.

  Gore Vidal

  Country, War, Honor

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• Since the advent of the atomic bomb, the United States has always needed two kinds of enemies. On one level, it has needed a tactical enemy that it can go out and fight in the field in a shooting war. Since 1945, these enemies have been created and appeared as North Korea, North Vietnam, Grenada, El Salvador, Panama, Iraq and now Colombia. On another level, however, the US needs a strategic enemy that will justify outrageous expenditures of capital for strategic weapon systems like ICBMs, Trident submarines and "Star Wars" missile defence systems.

  Michael Ruppert

  Stars, War, Fighting

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• Those who had demanded no more than an end to the bombing of North Vietnam and a commitment to negotiations saw their demands being realized, and lapsed into silence.

  Noam Chomsky

  Commitment, Silence, Being Real

  Noam Chomsky (2004). “At War with Asia”, p.62, AK Press

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• The pictures that were coming from Vietnam were showing us what was really happening on the ground level. It was in contradiction to what our political and military leaders were telling us. They were straight forward documentary images. A powerful indictment of the war, of how cruel and unjust it was. When I finally decided what to do with my life, it was to follow in that tradition.

  James Nachtwey

  Powerful, Military, War

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• The first half of Vietnam was fought to win the war, and the second half of Vietnam was soldiers going haywire without a mission, getting further and further towards our friend, Captain Kurtz and our friends at 'Apocalypse Now.'

  Dylan Ratigan

  War, Winning, Soldier

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• Lincoln made mistakes. Roosevelt made mistakes. Eisenhower made mistakes. The Battle of the Bulge was the biggest intelligence failure in American military history, much bigger than any in Vietnam or now. We didn't know that the Soviets were moving 400,000 or 500,000 troops. We missed it.

  Rudy Giuliani

  Military, Mistake, Moving

  "Larry King Live", edition.cnn.com. February 14, 2007.

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• My view of Bradley Manning is that he's a very courageous young man who... did what I didn't have the guts to do during the Vietnam war.

  Ray McGovern

  War, Men, Views

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• I wouldn't characterize anybody who fought in Vietnam as a war hero. In 23 bombing sorties, there must have been civilians that were killed and there's no heroism to that.

  Medea Benjamin

  War, Hero, Bombing

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• The war in Vietnam is going well and will succeed.

  Robert McNamara

  War, Succeed, Wells

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• The genius of America's endless war machine is that, learning from the unpleasantness of the Vietnam war protests, it has rendered the costs of war largely invisible.

  Glenn Greenwald

  War, America, Cost

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• In what is perhaps the strangest turn in the President's efforts to rally support, he agreed that Iraq is just like Vietnam, but in a good way.

  Jon Stewart

  Iraq, Support, Effort

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• The Vietnam war was fought over portion size.

  Jon Stewart

  War, Size, Portions

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• The United States can certainly defeat North Vietnam, but the United States cannot defeat a guerrilla war which is being raged from a sanctuary through a pattern of penetration, intervention, evasion, which is very difficult for a technologically advanced country like the United States to combat.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski

  Country, War, United States

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• I saw a man walk into my camera viewfinder from the left. He took a pistol out of his holster and raised it. I had no idea he would shoot. It was common to hold a pistol to the head of prisoners during questioning. So I prepared to make that picture - the threat, the interrogation. But it didn't happen. The man just pulled a pistol out of his holster, raised it to the VC's head and shot him in the temple. I made a picture at the same time. (On his 1968 photograph of the summary street corner execution of prisoner Nguyen Van Lem by South Vietnam's police chief, Lt. Col. Nguyen Ngoc Loan.)

  Eddie Adams

  Men, Ideas, Police

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• Vietnam, we take over by doing pedicure! That's how we take over. We take over one foot at a time, damn it - that's the plan of attack right there. We take over from the toe up, that's the plan. We spread over USA like fungus from the toe.

  Dat Phan

  Usa, Feet, Pedicures

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• There's another aspect about the Seventies. Blazing Saddles, as wonderful as it was, sort of hurt the Western. It made such fun of them, that you almost couldn't take them seriously from that point on. That's why only Westerns that had the stink of Watergate or Vietnam could be taken seriously. There were so few Westerns made since then, from the Eighties on, that the few directors who did were so pleased with themselves and so happy to have the opportunity that they got lost in visuals, they got lost in the vistas and the pretty scenery.

  Quentin Tarantino

  Hurt, Fun, Taken

  Source: www.pittsburghurbanmedia.com

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• When you have a peace movement that has an actual war, it's different from one that has wars that our country is not totally involved in. During the war in Vietnam, and to a lesser degree the wars in Central America where our country was directly involved, it was easier to organize.

  Grace Paley

  Country, War, America

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• Realistically speaking, Ayn Rand should not have opposed the antidraft movement and supported the Vietnam War effort - in effect, she supported military conscription.

  Murray Bookchin

  Military, War, Effort

  Interview with Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. October 1979.

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