Hassan Nasrallah Quotes
We did not start a fight with America, and we don't want a war with America. If someone launches an attack, though, we will respond. We will not take rejection or humiliation. We do not want to fight.
Noe, Nicholas, ed. Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Translated by Ellen Khouri, Verso, 2007.
This appears to be the first American utterance of a longstanding doctrine of foreign policy.
At the time the President denied that he had decided to invade Iraq. Skelton saw the “handwriting on the world.”
The meaning is that to be victorious in war one should not be inhibited from doing cruel and brutal things that war sometimes necessitates.
In this case, he was referring to the situation with the Barbary Pirates who had an incredible extortion racket going in the Mediterranean. If nations would pay them an annual sum each year, they would not attack and seize merchant ships of that country and sell the ships and goods while holding the sailors for ransom. Jefferson favored and authorized war—a naval attack which for many reasons the European nations had not done (they just paid the tribute). Then a peace treaty was finally signed—the first American Treaty.
Hassan Nasrallah is a Lebanese cleric and political leader who serves as the 3rd secretary-general of Hezbollah since his predecessor, Abbas al-Musawi, was assassinated by the Israel Defense Forces in February 1992.
