Tim Buck Quotes

Historically, we were always complaining about others interfering in our domestic and national issues.

National independence, and the preceding political struggles, helped create the space for literary creation in many post-colonial countries. Much of modern Indian or Chinese literature is inconceivable without the political movement for freedom from foreign rule.

No new state is ever fully ready for independence ..

I hope we shall never be disposed to offer to join the United States. They will display a great reluctance to take us but I believe we have a future of our own here.

I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.

Actually, the United States has been deeply involved in the fate of Vietnam since 1949 when the decision was made to subsidize the continuation of French rule against the Communist Vietminh rebellion

My heart rebels against any foreigner imposing on my country the peace which is here called Pax-Britannica.

I am opposed to globalism, I am opposed to colonialism, I am opposed to any sort of complusion of one nation over another. (...) I also deeply believe in human rights.

It's with them that we have constituted a liberation front and brought our logistic support to armies to help their countries come out of colonialism and establish a national internal regime.

You know, we do not want the militarization of Haiti. We do not see a Haitian as a protectorate where it relinquishes its own sovereignty.

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.

We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.

The Turkish, Arab and Chinese nationalists who built new nation-states out of the ruins of old empires scorned their old, decrepit rulers as much as they did the foreign imperialists who imposed free trade through gunboats.

The test of a good colonial policy is that it shall prepare colonies for independent self—government.

We conceive the recovery of her colonies by Spain to be hopeless,,, We aim not at the possession of any portion of them ourselves. We could not see any portion of them transferred to any other power with indifference.

I regarded and still regard the proposed annexation of Hawaii as not only opposed to our national policy but as a perversion of our national mission. The mission of our nation is to build up and make a great country out of what we have, instead of annexing islands

There will be no annexation of ourselves or our territory to an independent Quebec without our consent.

Canada is not another [American] State, and we don't want to be one.

It's time to bring dignity, honor, self-reliance, and self-government to people that have been held, not necessarily in bondage, but certainly as supplicants under an Indian Act that is archaic.

Though Great Britain could do perfectly well without her colonies, and though on every principle of morality and justice she ought to consent to their separation, should the time come when, after full trial of the best form of union, they deliberately desire to be dissevered—there are strong reasons for maintaining the present slight bond of connection, so long as not disagreeable to the feelings of either party.

The Congress of the United States says to the people of Puerto Rico, once and for all, that they are a part of the United States domain and will always remain there; that the legislation for independence in Puerto Rico must come to a decided and permanent end.

I didn’t fight the Belgians only to have my country colonized a second time.

The United States is engaged in an aggressive war which is heavy with racist overtones. It is not too much to suggest [that] the nation which has produced the widespread Alabama mentality will have little difficulty in persuading itself that the murder of great numbers of Asiatics does not really constitute a crime against humanity. If the Vietnamese were white, they would not get the treatment being meted out to them by the United States.

Our policy in Asia finds its inspiration in the constitution of the Union of Soviets, which we regard as a model of political equality between different races. It even goes so far as to admit the right of nations entering into the Union to leave it of their own free will without securing the consent of other members of the Union. And we do not apply our logic to ourselves alone; we act in the interest of conserving our institutions by applying in our policy in Asia this principle of “self-determination” – an American principle, by the way, transported to Europe by the Frenchmen who took part in the American War of Independence

Over time the maintenance of U.S. credibility quietly supplanted the stated policy objective of a free and independent South Vietnam.