Tariq Ali Quotes

Vietnam in America was truly a second Civil War.

We we’re wrong, terribly wrong [about the Vietnam war.]

We had the Vietnam War in the '60s, and there was a draft. The students didn't believe in it, and it unified them.

The war in Vietnam I thought a dreadful mistake.

Although one of the key justifications for the Vietnam war was to prevent the spread of communism, the U.S. defeat was to produce nothing of the kind: apart from the fact that Cambodia and Laos became embroiled, the effects were essentially confined to Vietnam.

I was caught up in the hysteria during the Vietnam era, which was brought about through Marxist propaganda underlying the so-called peace movement.

Vietnam was as much a laboratory experiment as a war.

The violence of the left is minor. Our total violence of the last 5 years has not reached the level of a single B-52 raid in Vietnam.

Lyndon Johnson WAS the Vietnam War. Without the paranoia of Johnson there would never have been a Vietnam.

The Vietnam War was a tragedy waiting to happen, but one made much worse by countless errors along the way, in many of which I had a part.

It looks to me like we’re getting into another Korea …. What the hell is Vietnam worth to me? What is it worth to this country?

You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. They rebel in the street…. They don’t go to school because they are going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam.

Much of the conventional wisdom associated with Vietnam was highly inaccurate. Far from an inevitable result of the imperative to contain communism, the war was only made possible through lies and deceptions aimed at the American public, Congress, and members of Lyndon Johnson's own administration.

I covered the Vietnam War. I remember the lies that were told, the lives that were lost - and the shock when, twenty years after the war ended, former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara admitted he knew it was a mistake all along.

The Vietnam War was a great tragedy for our country. And it is now far enough away so that one can study without using the slogans to see what's really happened.

The deceit and distortion surrounding the American invasion of Vietnam is by now so familiar that it has lost its power to shock.

Majored in staying out of Vietnam.

Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods.

During the Vietnam era, more than 30,000 draft dodgers and deserters sought harbor in cities like Montreal and Toronto, where public opposition to the war was strong and most residents didn't question their motives.

Vietnam was the defining event for my generation. It spilled over into all facets of American life - into music, into the pulpits, in churches of our country. It spilled over into the city streets, police forces. And even if you were born late in the generation, Vietnam was still part of your childhood.

The World War II generation believed the United States could do anything - anything... And Vietnam was a shattering experience for everyone.

As for Vietnam, what matters is that Kennedy successfully resisted pressure to send anything more than military advisers, a stance that was a likely prelude to complete withdrawal from the conflict. There is solid evidence of his eagerness to end America's military role in that country's civil war.

No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.

I remember in the spring of 1971, a hundred thousand people converged on the Pentagon in June of 1971. They threw blood; I guess it was goat's blood or something, on the steps to the Pentagon. People were being accused of being murderers and baby killers. You just can't imagine the civic outrage.

I left the Democratic Party basically on issues of national security during the end of the Vietnam War.