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The art of diplomacy is to take an opportunity and turn it into something.

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
Opportunity
Art
Take
Something
Diplomacy
Turn
Turns

More quotes by 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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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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After all, we didn't bring democracy to Germany in 1945 Hitler destroyed democracy there first.
Brent Scowcroft
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The UN could help the Iraqi government get on its feet and help the United States withdraw a bit more.
Brent Scowcroft
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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.
Brent Scowcroft
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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
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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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America wants to work with friends, with allies, with people of good will, to make this a better world.
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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An idea can be as flawless as can be, but its execution will always be full of mistakes.
Brent Scowcroft
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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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We can't make China a friend, but we can behave to make them an enemy.
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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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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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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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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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.
Brent Scowcroft
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The radical elements in Islam are very dangerous.
Brent Scowcroft
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I think above all, what we need with Iran is patience.
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