Richard Holbrooke Quotes

World War II brought the Greatest Generation together. Vietnam tore the Baby Boomers apart.

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'm not a pacifist. I was very much for the war against Hitler and I also supported the intervention in Korea, but in this war we went in there to steal Vietnam.

I think the new generations in America, the America's youth, no longer care about Vietnam. They don't want to hear any more about it.

My father is American and deserted the Vietnam War.

America lost its face with the debacle of the Vietnam War.

My mind-set is Munich. Most of my generation's is Vietnam.

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.

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.

I feel like the people from Iceland have a different relationship with their country than other places. Most Icelandic people are really proud to be from there, and we don't have embarrassments like World War II where we were cruel to other people.

The war in Vietnam I thought a dreadful mistake.

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

A quarter-century after the end of the Vietnam War, and eleven years after the collapse of the Berlin wall, it has become commonplace to say that we Americans have no consensus on foreign policy. Across the political spectrum, left or right, most Americans still cling to whatever assumptions they held during our long journey through the Cold War.

The Iraq War. No one took to the streets over it. It certainly would have been appropriate. If anybody even hinted we should... you were called un-American and not supporting the troops.

I saw courage both in the Vietnam War and in the struggle to stop it. I learned that patriotism includes protest, not just military service.

I think the language of sacrifice is particularly important for societies like the United States in which war remains our most determinative common experience, because states like the United States depend on the story of our wars for our ability to narrate our history as a unified story.

I was so opposed to the war in Vietnam that I initially refused President Nixon's urgings for me to go there.

I was arrested in 1965 for opposing the war in Vietnam. There were 39 of us arrested that day. But thousands opposed us. And the majority of the people in the country supported the war then.

World War II was just as dirty and brutal as Vietnam, just as confusing.

Vietnam was as much a laboratory experiment as a war.

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

I started in politics by opposing the war in Vietnam.... I don't think it was right, and I think it has seriously undermined the position of America in the world. It has weakened the social and political fabric of our country. And it is going to take heroic efforts to rebuild America because of it.

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.

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?