Michael Ignatieff Quotes
From the very beginning, the American republic has never shrunk from foreign wars …. There has scarcely been a year since its founding that American soldiers haven’t been overseas … American foreign policy largely consists of doctrines about when and where to intervene in other people’s countries.
Michael Ignatieff, Canadian Member of Parliament (Liberal), Director, Carr Center of the Kennedy School of Government, “Why Are We in Iraq,” New York Times Magazine, September 7, 2003
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The possibility of intervention in the affairs of other counties even if there is no U. S. national interest involved, was not new when the George W. Bush administration sent troops to Somalia and Bill Clinton bombed Serbia. There were appeals made “to our sympathies” and there were serious atrocities. But these modern Presidents were just following the policy clearly stated by Theodore Roosevelt in 1904.
This is a variant of a famous Clauswitz quotation {635143}.
3 years later he led America on a huge invasion and nation building project in Iraq. It turned out that had he listened to his own advice and not flip-flopped, the huge cost of the Iraq War might have been avoided.
See {633152} for more of the reasoning for this point. “Neocon” is a shortened form of “neoconservative”. At the time the neoconservatives were advocating use of military intervention in the Middle East. Munich was the German city in which British Prime Minister notoriously tried to appease Hitler and the Nazis. This led to WWII and has become the historical icon for appeasement of a powerful tyrant and the cost of such.
What makes this quotation important is that the Central Intelligence Agency disobeyed the order and implemented a number of covert operations in Indonesia and CIA Director Alan Dulles did not tell the President. See {634612} for his rationale.
Michael Grant Ignatieff PC CM is a Canadian author, academic and former politician. He was the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Leader of the Official Opposition from 2008 until 2011. Known for his work as a historian, Ignatieff has held senior academic posts at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, and Toronto. He is currently rector and President of Central European University.
