Bashir Assad Quotes

At the end of the day...if your army won't fight, it's because they don't trust their incompetent, corrupt generals, they don't trust each other. This is an enduring civil war between the Shia, the Sunni, and the Kurds. So I don't think we've got any options and we'd be ill-advised to start bombing where we really can't sort out the combatants or understand where the civilian population is.

Once the war against Saddam begins, we expect every American to support our military, and if they can't do that, to shut up.

After that his Majesty was beheaded, the Parliament for some years effected nothing either for the publick peace or tranquillity of the nation, or settling religion as they had formerly promised.

Only in South Africa could you have a change in government without civil war. If there wasn't the depth of love and caring among our people, this would not have happened.

Death created the modern American union, not just by ensuring national survival, but by shaping enduring national structures and commitments. The work of death was Civil War America's most fundamental and most demanding undertaking.

If the security forces continue to be dominated as they are now by political groups or sects, then the people won't trust in them - and the result will be civil war or fragmentation of the country.

The Union, which can alone insure internal peace, and external security to each State, Must and Shall be Preserved, cost what it may in time, treasure, and blood.

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle—field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

I accept your nomination in the confident trust that the masses of our countrymen, North and South, are eager to clasp hands across the bloody chasm which has so long divided them, forgetting that they have been enemies in the joyous consciousness that they are, and must henceforth remain brothers.

In a highly diverse and fragmented society like Iraq, the military...is one of the few national institutions that stresses national unity as an important principle. Tot ear apart the army in the war’s aftermath could lead to the destruction of one of the only forces for unity within the society.

It is unfortunate that there is not a government in Iraq that has been able to unify the Shiites and the Sunnis sufficiently. They are not currently fighting together.

Iraq lacks leaders capable of soothing sectarian wounds, and Western attempts to pick them or force their hand invite anti-imperialist backlash.

It is almost inconceivable that citizens of that time were willing to support so bloody a war, by putting so high a price upon Union and Liberty.

It is now conceded that all idea of British intervention is at an end... I want to hug the army of the Potomac. I want to get the whole army of Vicksburg drunk at my own expense. I want to fight some small man and lick him.

The warlords took part in atrocities during the civil war in Afghanistan. They looted, they raped, they killed. They have become incredibly empowered and entrenched. They live in mansions, they have jobs in the government, and they're incredibly powerful. In Kabul, people don't want to speak about it too publicly, because these people are essentially like Tony Soprano.

The evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous and speedy peace whose joyous expression can not be restrained. In the midst of this, however, He, from Whom all blessings flow, must not be forgotten. A call for a national thanksgiving is being prepared, and will be duly promulgated.

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.

I just don't see why anybody would vote Republican in the Army. If you want to support the troops, if I was a troop, I would say, 'You know how to support me? Don't send me to stupid wars.'

There were 315,000 slave owners in the Union Army (with 200,000 in the Confederate Army) and the men who walked away from the Union Army were adamantly opposed to freeing slaves. We cite these facts and recorded statistics to point out that the principal cause of the war was not the issue of slavery.

We don't supply a hundred billion dollars worth of weapons to the war criminals in Saudi Arabia nor do we supply eight million dollars a day to the Israeli army that is also violating international law and human rights.

As for the South, it is enough to say that perhaps eighty per cent. of her armies were neither slave-holders, nor had the remotest interest in the institution. No other proof, however, is needed than the undeniable fact that at any period of the war from its beginning to near its close the South could have saved slavery by simply laying down its arms and returning to the Union.

Yes and no. Because America has only about 1 percent of the population serving in the military, it is hard for many civilians to understand the sacrifices military families make. However, my experience is that after the Vietnam War, the public learned that they should support the military whether or not they support the war. You've seen that outpouring of support for the veterans of both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects ... what they thus lost they have never got back.

If we want to understand the actions of a man in the early 1860's, put yourself back there in his shoes. As a young man he began piloting steamboats on the Mississippi, a job he loved and wanted to do the rest of his life, he said. The Civil War ended traffic on the River and his job. He wrote about it in A History of A Campaign That Failed. He said: "I joined the Confederacy, served for two weeks, deserted, and the Confederacy fell." His attachment to the Southern ideal of slavery does not appear very sturdy.

I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than the dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice everything but honor for its preservation.