Alistair Cooke Quotes
These doomsday warriors look no more like soldiers than the soldiers of the Second World War looked like conquistadors. The more expert they become the more they look like lab assistants in small colleges.
Cooke, Alistair. Talk About America. Alfred A. Knopf, 1968.
During WWII, Mauldin was at the front lines and in the fox holes with the troops getting ideas for his cartoons most of which were drawn on the battle field;
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey recently described the Iranian leadership as “rational actors.” Lewis, the Western World’s greatest Islamic Historian, was advising regarding the Iranian effort to enrich uranium. The Iranians if they enriched enough could develop a nuclear weapon. Historically, nuclear powers have always been deterred by using them as the retaliation would wipe out most of their country and people. This Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) Lewis felt might not inhibit the Iranian leadership who have glorified suicide bombers and have sent tens of thousands of young people to their deaths (and immediately to Paradise) leading Iranian troops through Iraqi minefields in the Iran Iraq War. The national security question was should Iran be allowed to get a nuclear weapon?
See {635101} for a much ealier view of war’s uncertainty.
Alistair Cooke KBE was a British-born American writer whose work as a journalist, television personality and radio broadcaster was done primarily in the United States. Outside his journalistic output, which included Letter from America and America: A Personal History of the United States, he was well known in the United States as the host of PBS Masterpiece Theatre from 1971 to 1992. After holding the job for 22 years, and having worked in television for 42 years, Cooke retired in 1992, although he continued to present Letter from America until shortly before his death. He was the father of author and folk singer John Byrne Cooke.
