Douglas Hurd Quotes
But it cannot follow that because weapons and troops are now being deployed we are bound to go to war.
Hurd, Douglas. "Iraq." Hansard, House of Lords, 26 Feb. 2003.
The line was delivered by Dustin Hoffman.
At the time of this speech virtually the entire world believed that. However world attitude changed markedly after the administration of George W. Bush and the United States invasion of Afghanistan after September 11 and the Iraq War which was for regime change.
With a professionalized all volunteer military, most of whom came from just a few socio-economic strata of our society, wars at the time were fought and the risks and burdens borne by a small part of American society. The rest of society, unlike the Second World War did not experience any change in their style or standard of living.
President Polk and General Zachary Taylor will not He was the last President before Texas became a State. Most of us are surprised that the Texas President opposed the Mexican War.
At the time the President denied that he had decided to invade Iraq. Skelton saw the “handwriting on the world.”
Nasser was indeed planning an attack. Israeli intelligence had discovered it, and the Israeli’s informed President Lyndon Johnson who in turn called Kosygin. Nasser and the Arabs had miscalculated again and ended up being not only defeated in the war they wanted but totally embarrassed by the incredibly poor performance of the Arab armies who greatly outnumbered the Israelis but had no stomach for a fight.
This quotation is important for two reasons. First, it shows that there was a very hostile environment in Europe well before the assassination of the Archduke of Austria that “triggered” WWI. Second, that the Germans were racist before Hitler ever came on the scene. The Emperor demagogued the issue and took it to new extremes, but the evil was there. To the Germans, the Slavs and Russians were a lesser form of humanity than the Germans. The Austrians were threatening to attack Serbia and Russia. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, ruled many ethnic Slavs, Russians and Muslims—the lower forms of humanity—and long before Hitler, Wilhelm and other leading Germans thought that the Germanic Peoples should rule that part of the world as the lesser “races” were not fit to rule.
Douglas Richard Hurd, Baron Hurd of Westwell, CH, CBE, PC is a British Conservative politician who served in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major from 1979 to 1995.
