Alistair Horne Quotes

Henry Kissinger spent years negotiating the terms of our surrender there and ended up with a deal that he could have gotten on the first day he went to work in the Nixon White House - the Americans leave and North Vietnam wins.

Curtis Le May wants to bomb Hanoi and Haiphong. You know how he likes to go around bombing.

I was fourteen when Kissinger made his secret trip to China, and then there was subsequently Nixon's trip to China, and I was very much seized with an interest in China.

Some Kennedy aides have always insisted that Johnson misread J.F.K.'s plans for Vietnam. They say that Kennedy had begun to rethink the U.S. presence in Indochina and was reluctant to increase it.

To me our bombing policy appears to be suicidal. Not because it does not do vast damage to our enemy, it does; but because, simultaneously, it does vast damage to our peace aim, unless that aim is mutual economic and social annihilation.

We asked Jane Fonda if she would like to meet American pilots in Hanoi, but she refused, she didn't want to.

Kids flew B-17s in daylight bombing raids over Germany in World War II. Kids fought in Korea and Vietnam.

The reasons for disliking diplomacy are legion. Engaging in serious diplomacy would mean reviewing the way Washington advocates for and deploys its principles. It might necessitate a glance in the mirror and asking why the United States believes it is uniquely empowered to interpret the Creator's higher purpose for people in other lands.

In Washington the semantics of the military muted the reality of war for the civilian policy-makers. In quiet, air-conditioned, thick-carpeted rooms, such terms as 'systematic pressure,' 'armed reconnaissance,' 'targets of opportunity,' and even 'body count' seemed to breed a sort of games-theory detachment.

With the passage of each day and each week, we can expect increasing pressure to stop the bombing [of North Vietnam]. This will come from various elements of the American public, of the press, the United Nations, of world opinion. Therefore time will run against us on this operation, and I think the North Vietnam are counting on this.

Most students of Kissinger find it hard to say anything about Kissinger that isn't about the man himself. He is such an outsize figure that he eclipses his own context, leading his many biographers, critics, and admirers to focus nearly exclusively on the quirks of his personality or his moral failings.

Henry Kissinger is perhaps the best-known American statesman of the 20th century.

Christmas 1972 was a lonely time for Kissinger, as well as for his boss, and a period of serious reflection. Kissinger was then a bachelor, enamored of the tall, elegant, but elusive WASP Nancy Maginnes, but still very much a bachelor - Washington's most sought-after bachelor.

I'll always be on the move for peace in the Korean peninsula. If necessary, I will fly straight to Washington. I will go to Beijing and Tokyo and, if the conditions allow, to Pyongyang as well.

America needs an adult in the White House who knows how to deal with China.

Enough is enough. This is how we get started in Vietnam.

The White House was so eager to rid itself of Iraq that it was willing to withdraw rather than lock in arrangements that would preserve our influence and interests.

President Donald Trump has said, he would be honored to meet Kim Jong-un under the right circumstances. What are those circumstances?

There are a lot of people who say that bombing cannot win the war. My reply to that is that it has never been tried. . . and we shall see.

A world war - God forbid! - will leave only smoldering ashes as a mute testimony of a human race whose folly led inexorably to untimely death. Yet there are those who sincerely feel that disarmament is an evil and international negotiation is an abominable waste of time.

I am pleased though that there's a possibility of a diplomatic solution [in Syria]. I remain somewhat skeptical, but I am pleased that it's a possibility and I think people like myself who've been arguing for delaying this bombing, have allowed this diplomatic possibility to occur.

Given lesser opportunities, Kissinger would have done very well as a talk show host. Fortunately for him, although not so fortunately for the United States, he found his patron in Nelson Rockefeller instead of William Paley.

The entire world has one goal, and that is the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, we want to achieve that peaceably, but all options are on the table.

Christmas day is the children's, but the holidays are youth's dancing-time.

[John F. Kennedy] kept a diary and in the White House dictated his thoughts. He felt real guilt at the killing of [Ngo Dinh] Diem, the leader of South Vietnam.