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After the '30s, we said, no more Munichs. And it got us in a lot of problems. Then we said, No more Vietnams. Now if we say, No more Iraqs, the next one won't be an Iraq. It will be something different. You can't learn lessons.

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
Problem
Different
Something
Vietnam
Iraq
Lessons
Problems
Learn
Next

More quotes by Brent Scowcroft

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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.
Brent Scowcroft
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Information technology has politicized the world's population.
Brent Scowcroft
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Who is the guarantor, if there is one, of a more stable world? It's the United States.
Brent Scowcroft
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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.
Brent Scowcroft
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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.
Brent Scowcroft
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After all, we didn't bring democracy to Germany in 1945 Hitler destroyed democracy there first.
Brent Scowcroft
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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.
Brent Scowcroft
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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.
Brent Scowcroft
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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.
Brent Scowcroft
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The radical elements in Islam are very dangerous.
Brent Scowcroft
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An idea can be as flawless as can be, but its execution will always be full of mistakes.
Brent Scowcroft
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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.
Brent Scowcroft
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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.
Brent Scowcroft
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The art of diplomacy is to take an opportunity and turn it into something.
Brent Scowcroft
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The Iraqis need help establishing a government. We have to provide them with security.
Brent Scowcroft
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We must find out where the roots of terrorism lie.
Brent Scowcroft
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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.
Brent Scowcroft
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I think that America is a part of the world, that we want to cooperate with the world. We are not the dominant power in the world, that everyone falls in behind us. But we want to reach out and cooperate.
Brent Scowcroft
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Yes, Israel's our ally. But, are the Palestinians our enemy? No, they are not.
Brent Scowcroft
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We can't make China a friend, but we can behave to make them an enemy.
Brent Scowcroft