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The Europeans must finally understand the incredible shock triggered by the attacks of September 11.

Brent Scowcroft

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Brent Scowcroft
Age: 95 †
Born: 1925
Born: March 19
Died: 2020
Died: August 6
Former National Security Advisor
Geopolitician
Military Officer
Politician
Ogden
Utah
September
Shock
Incredible
Finally
Understand
Must
Triggered
Europeans
Attacks

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To 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.
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We have never recognized that Iran lives in a dangerous neighborhood. And it's not surprising that they want some protection. We have not been forthcoming about explaining a security relationship for the region, in which Iran can feel secure and thus maybe willing to do something.
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The radical elements in Islam are very dangerous. They want to achieve a return to the Islamic purity of the Middle Ages.
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The Russians are not going to do what we want them to do because we want them to do it.
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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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Everybody is within reach of a television set. And so they're all politicized, and they're all stimulated, and then they have these desires, pleasures, hates, resentments, and so on, and they're reacting instantaneously.
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We believe we are creating the beginning of a new world order coming out of the collapse of the US-Soviet antagonisms.
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Osama bin Laden is going after us to get us out of the region, so he can deal with the regimes that he sees in the region, or replace them with purists.
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If Iraq were to descend into chaos, the Europeans would feel the effects just as much as we would.
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Many Sunnis, who are still stuck in the Saddam era mindset and believe Iraq belongs to them, are trying to prevent a new country from developing at all.
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Perhaps the most troubling area in the world goes from the Balkans through the Middle East and in Central Asia.
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But figuring out Saddam Hussein was one our greatest mysteries. He marched to his own drummer and frequently as this unfolded he made decisions which were sometimes inexplicable to us and sometimes didn't look very smart.
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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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You know, different people are going to react different ways. And I don't think we should be intolerable because people do things a little differently.
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The art of diplomacy is to take an opportunity and turn it into something.
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America wants to work with friends, with allies, with people of good will, to make this a better world.
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After all, we didn't bring democracy to Germany in 1945 Hitler destroyed democracy there first.
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Europeans are familiar with terrorism and violence. We have not experienced a true conflict on our soil in a hundred years, and especially not one that involved 3,000 dead.
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For most of mankind, the average person knew what was happening in his own village and the next one, and nothing beyond that, and he didn't care, so that leaders were able to guide their countries almost irrespective of what people really thought because they weren't involved in it. Now, everybody knows what's happening instantaneously.
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The Iraqi elections were an important first step.
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