Dean Acheson Quotes
The Iraqi is really not whacky toady, perhaps, even tacky. When they gave him the word, he gave us the bird and joined with the Arabs, by cracky!
Acheson, Dean. Among Friends: Personal Letters of Dean Acheson, edited by David S. McLellan and David C. Acheson, Dodd, Mead, 1980.
Things were not so different 80 years ago.
The strategic importance of Iraq was critical ever since oil was discovered in Iraq, Kuwait, Iran and the Gulf States.
The Shiites are a faction of Islam that has contested with the majority faction, the Sunnis, for theological and cultural dominance of Islam and the Middle East. The Shiites were the majority in Iraq but under Saddam were dominated by the Sunni. Iran is a Shiite country but the Arab states other than Iraq have Sunni majorities and dominance.
His balanced judgment and concern for American Casualties changed during the Iraq War over a decade later where he insisted on taking steady American casualties even after Saddam had been deposed and American troops were in the middle of a sectarian civil war.
This quotation illustrates the derogatory and disrespectful attitude that many high level American officials then had towards Arab leaders. No one objected to or reprimanded Symmes for his use of the word “mongrels”. And he was the State Departments leading expert on the Middle East and Arab Cultures. In the photo, Symmes is the gentlemen on the right.
Dean Gooderham Acheson was an American statesman and lawyer. As United States Secretary of State in the administration of President Harry S. Truman from 1949 to 1953, he played a central role in defining American foreign policy during the Cold War. Acheson helped design the Marshall Plan and was a key player in the development of the Truman Doctrine and creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
