Ronald Reagan Quotes

It's shades of Vietnam again, folks: body counts.

I was not able to stop or slow down the Vietnam War.

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.

I think you are going to have to send troops to Vietnam and if you do, I will come up from Gettysburg to support you.

I don't recall anyone who was strongly against except one man, and that was the President [JFK]. The President just didn't want to be convinced that this was the right thing to do.... It was really the President's personal conviction that U.S. ground troops shouldn't go in.

You're bombing that little piss-ant country up there [Vietnam], and you think you can blow them up. You've been doing this all the time. It's a bunch of crap about wanting to negotiate.

Every book that comes out, every article that comes out, talks about how - while it may have been a "mistake" or an "unwise effort" - the United States was defending South Vietnam from North Vietnamese aggression. And they portray those who opposed the war as apologists for North Vietnam. That's standard to say. The purpose is obvious: to obscure the fact that the United States did attack South Vietnam and the major war was fought against South Vietnam.

The U.S. has intervened more often in more countries farther from its own shores than has any power in modern history.

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.

With Vietman, we found ourselves involved there before we really understood what was going on.

By the mid-sixties, the United States had poured more than half a million troops into South Vietnam.

Just like the Alamo, somebody damn well needed to go to their aid. Well, by God, I'm going to Viet Nam's aid!

And in Iraq we tried to implement the same policy that was so successful in Saudi Arabia, but Saddam Hussein didn't buy. When the economic hit men fail in this scenario, the next step is what we call the jackals.

Such recognition is not necessary in order to enable the United States to intervene and pacify the Island.

Ever since 1954, when the United States did not sign the Geneva accords but instead started down the road of unilateral military action in South Vietnam, we have become a provocateur of military conflict in Southeast Asia and marched in the opposite direction from fulfilling our obligations under the United Nations Charter.

The United States of America… cannot have a viable foreign policy if we are humiliated in Vietnam. We must not lose in Vietnam. It’s as cold as that. Right?... And they have not given us any way to avoid being humiliated. And since they have not, we must draw the sword, so the blockade is on.

When the United States bombs South Vietnam, it is defending South Vietnam.

Now, I know there are many Americans who say, 'Get out of Afghanistan. Bring 'em all home.' And there are others who say, 'Put in hundreds of thousands of more.'

I simply told people what I thought about the state of the war in Vietnam, and it was that we better get out of this.

Vietnam was not a war of choice the United States had to fight. It was clearly not central.

Afghanistan would have been difficult enough without Iraq. Iraq made it impossible. The argument that had we just focused on Afghanistan we'd now be okay is persuasive, but it omits the fact that we weren't supposed to get involved in nation-building in Afghanistan.

The [Libyan] rebels this week kind of hinted to the United States that they could use a little help. Right. Like, America would just blunder around the Middle East killing people without all the facts. That doesn't sound like the America I know.

It was obvious uh, that uh, the situation in Vietnam was far from stable in 1964 and that there, if in fact the United States was going to uh carry out its declared intent to uh, do its best to prevent uh, a Communist overrun of South Vietnam, uh, there would be at least hard choices to make, and there might be a choice for uh, stronger action.

Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States could not serve as the world's policeman; it should also have taught us the dangers of trying to be the world's midwife to democracy when the birth is scheduled to take place under conditions of guerrilla war.