| |
Asien
The picture of the world's greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1,000 non-combatants a week, while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, in not a pretty one.
US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, in a 1967 letter to US President Lyndon Johnson about the Vietnam War
Look, if you think any American official is going to tell you the truth then you're stupid. Did you hear that? Stupid.
Arthur Sylvester, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, speaking to U.S. correspondents in Saigon, 1965
Our situation, or better or worse, is that Korea is a treaty ally, and the US has a very strong security interest in that part of the world.
US State Department spokesman, after a US-supported crackdown on students and workers in the city of Kwangju 1980, killing hundreds or thousands of people
Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to Jimmy Carter, in 1998 on the military aid to Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan
In the view of some observers, continued dictatorship in Thailand suits the United States, since it assures a continuation of American bases in the country and that, as a US official put it bluntly, 'is our real interest in this place'.
Washington Post, 1966
Kinas inträde i WTO är enda gången i vår livstid som vi har en möjlighet att öppna upp en marknad med 1300 miljoner konsumenter.
Philip Lesser, chef för Floridas citrusfruktodlare
It was necessaiy to destroy the village in order to save it.
An American officer in Vietnam in a 1968 report on the razing of Vietamese village Ben Tre
I have no weakness for shoes. I wear very simple shoes which are pump shoes. It is not one of my weaknesses.
Imelda Marcos, former First Lady of the Philippines, and owner of 3,400 pairs of shoes
We are left on our own to cope with the remnants of the Afghan war, which include arms smuggling ... drugs and ... [religious] zealots who were leaders at the time of the Afghan war.
Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan Prime Minister, 1996, on the results of Pakistans cooperation with the U.S. in supporting the Afghan resistance against Soviet occupation
I would say that the entire, almost the entire Korean Peninsula is just a terrible mess. Everything is destroyed. There is nothing standing worthy of the name.
U.S. Major General Emmett O’Donnell, on the aftermath of the Korean War, 1951
With its 100 million people and its 300-mile arc of islands containing the region's richest hoard of natural resources, Indonesia is the greatest prize in Southeast Asia.
Richard Nixon
I would like to say that several months ago in Detroit we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia.
...
They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam, in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.
John Kerry, navy lieutenant and leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War
in a testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee 1971
[The bombing will continue] until the people of the country themselves recognize that this is going to go on until they get the leadership changed.
Adm. Sir Michael Boyce, chief of the British Defense Staff, on the bombing of Afghanistan
...it involves our need for markets for our agricultural and industrial products, our need to seek in return from the rest of the world such essentials as manganese and cobalt, tin and tungsten.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. President, on the Korean War, 11 Jun 1953
A time comes when silence is betrayal. That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.
Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967
He's our kind of guy.
Senior official of the Clinton administration, about general Suharto, dictator of Indonesia, in 1995
You can't plug billions of dollars into an anti-Communist jihad, accept participation from all over the world and ignore the consequences. But we did. Our objectives weren't peace and grooviness in Afghanistan. Our objective was killing Commies and getting the Russians out.
US diplomat in Pakistan in 1996
My men grumble that they are frustrated — that there are no good targets left any more. But I always remind them of the plight of the pilots back in the States. "Let's face it," I tell them, "Vietnam is the only place in the world today where you can drop real bombs."
U. S. Air Force wing commander during the Vietnam War
100,000,000 potential enemies are dangerous.
President Franklin D Roosevelt about the Japanese propaganda about of Pan-Asian solidarity, March 1945
Man bör kalla saker och ting vid deras rätta namn. Det som pågår nu i Vietnam är en form av tortyr. Därför är bombningarna ett illdåd. Därav finns det många i modern historia. De förbinds ofta med namn: Guernica, Oradour, Babij Jar, Katyn, Lidice, Sharpeville och Treblinka. Nu finns ytterligare ett namn att foga till raden: Hanoi, julen 1972.
Olof Palme efter julbombningarna av Hanoi 1972
We have no political prisoners - only Communists and others involved in conspiracies against the country.
Park Chung Hee, President of South Korea, 1974
And who are we supporting in Vietnam today? It's a man by the name of General Ky, who fought with the French against his own people, and who said on one occasion that the greatest hero of his life is Hitler. This is who we're supporting in Vietnam today. Oh, our government, and the press generally, won't tell us these things, but God told me to tell you this morning.
Martin Luther King
Om man nu skulle följa lite den här Koranens eller Gamla Testamentets regel "öga för öga" så sen först när det är 6000 eller mera oskyldiga så sen är man på jämn... jämställd bas. Jag menar att när man utför sån dära hemska saker som de gjorde där så måste man också ta konsekvenserna.
Gustav Hägglund, EU:s "överbefälhavare", om USA:s attacker mot Afghanistan
No one cared, as long as they were Communists, that they were being butchered. No one was getting very worked up about it.
Howard Federspiel, the Indonesia expert at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, describing the US supported overthrow of Sukarno in 1965 and the associated genocide of at least 500,000 Indonesians
I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. I encouraged the Thai to help the [Khmer Rouge]. The question was how to help the Cambodian people. Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him. But China could.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's National Security Adviser, on the U.S. strategy against Vietnams occupation of Cambodia
Jag menar att det där... det är liksom... både i Koranen och i Gamla Testamentet som de hänvisar till... det sägs alltid att det är det rätta måttet som man ska svara med, att om ögat går så tar man ett annat öga, att... att... att de ska vara i balans, att man får inte överreagera, man får inte... eh... ta till... till större och kraftigare hämndaktioner än den ursprungliga aktionen har varit och från den synpunkten så är vi nog hemskt långt... eller, inte vi, men jag menar världen överhuvudtaget, hemskt långt ifrån... eh... en... jämn situation.
Gustav Hägglund, EU:s "överbefälhavare", om USA:s attacker mot Afghanistan
You have created a Frankenstein's Monster.
Benazir Bhutto, president of Pakistan, in response to US celebrations of the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan
Your government participated in creating a monster
Algerian sociologist on the U.S. support to islamic fundamentalist resistance in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation
The bombing of Laos ranks among the most obscene acts of war. It was wanton destruction, power without restraint divorced from the purpose of battle, which is to take and hold territory. ... Like medieval armies salting fields and poisoning wells, modern air forces leave behind them weapons which they know will sprout death for decades to come.
Simon Jenkins
...när motståndaren liksom gömmer sig bland befolkningen... så... det är nästan oundvikligt att det blir också sånt här som kallas för "collateral damage", att också sådana... ehm... människor... och byggnader och installationer och så vidare träffas som inte är egentligen målet för attacken... man kan inte urskilja så noga
Gustav Hägglund, EU:s "överbefälhavare", om USA:s attacker mot Afghanistan
The war caused by the aggression of the South Vietnamese peasants against the United States.
Noam Chomsky about the Vietnam War
...something of which we can be proud as Americans. It has involved virtually no American casualties. What we are getting for our money there... is, I think, to use the old phrase, very cost effective.
U. Alexis Johnson, US Under Secretary of State, in 1971 about the Laos operation
Strikes at population targets (per se) are likely
not only to create a
counterproductive wave of revulsion abroad and
at home, but greatly to
increase the risk of enlarging the war with China
and the Soviet Union.
Destruction of locks and dams, however - if
handled right - might offer
promise. It should be studied. Such destruction
does not kill or drown
people. By shallow-flooding the rice, it leads after
time to widespread
starvation (more than a million) unless food is
provided - which we
could offer to do at the conference table.
John McNaughton, US State Department
Vietnam policy
We love your adherence to democratic principle.
Vice President George Bush Sr to Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos
We should declare war on North Vietnam... We could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it, and still be home by Christmas.
Ronald Reagan, October 1965
On summer nights when the breeze is blowing, I can still hear their cries, the little kids screaming.
Edward L. Daily, U.S. Army machine-gunner at the No Gun Ri Massacre in Korea 1950
Should the Red hordes continue to pour across the Yalu, it might not only render impossible the resumption of our offensive, but conceivably could eventuate in a movement in retrograde.
General Douglas MacArthur in a press conference, commenting on the situation in Korea, tries to avoid the word "retreat"
We have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. Our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and maintain social stability for our investments. This tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and Peru. Increasingly the role our nation has
taken is the role of those who refuse to give up the privileges and pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.
Martin Luther King, Jr, 1967
You've done much to strengthen the tradition of 5,000 years' commitment to freedom.
President Ronald Reagan to Korean military strongman Chun Doo Hwan, in 1981. In 1996, a Korean court convicted Chun of treason and murder, and sentenced him to death, for his role in the Kwangju massacre of 1980.
It really was a big help to the army ... They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands. But that's not all bad. There's a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment.
US diplomat on the list of about 5000 names of suspected communists that the US emabassy gave Indonesian army during their mass slayings in 1965
United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.
Daniel Moynihan, US ambassador to the UN, on the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975
I made the numbers up
US Philippine embassy official, on their information to the media in 1991 that embassy polls indicated that 68 percent, 72 percent or even 81 percent of the Philippine people supported the US military bases
How were American Indians treated? What about African Negroes?
Two rhetorical questions used in Japanese propaganda in Asia throughout the war against the United States
Everybody should rise up and say, "Thank you, Mr. President, for bombing Haiphong."
Martha Mitchell, wife of Attorney General John Mitchell, addressing a Republican Women's Conference
The peoples of Korea and China have indeed been the objectives of bacteriological weapons. These have been employed by units of the U.S.A. armed forces, using a great variety of different methods for the purpose.
An International Scientific committee composed of scientists from Sweden, France, Great Britain, Italy, Brazil and the Soviet Union, in August 1952
Om vi hade jord skulle vi helt enkelt stanna där och bruka jorden för våra behov. Men vi är utan jord, så vi har inget annat val än att jobba i den ekonomiska zonen även om det är mycket tungt och situationen här är väldigt orättvis. Rekryterarna sa vi skulle få hög inkomst, men som jag har upplevt det kan jag inte ens klara mina egna utgifter, och inte skicka mina föräldrar några pengar.
Raquel, som flyttat in från landet till frihandelszonen Cavite på Filippinerna
|
|
|
