Winston Churchill Quotes
(When British troops were still garrisoned in Egypt, Nasser requested arms from the United States.) You can't give them (the Egyptians) arms with which to kill British soldiers who fought shoulder to shoulder with you in the war (World War II.)
Winston Churchill, 1874-1965, British Prime Minister (Conservative), Remark to Dwight Eisenhower, 1954
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This quotation illustrates the derogatory and disrespectful attitude that many high level American officials then had towards Arab leaders. No one objected to or reprimanded Symmes for his use of the word “mongrels”. And he was the State Departments leading expert on the Middle East and Arab Cultures. In the photo, Symmes is the gentlemen on the right.
Before American entry into the War with Japan, Chiang Kai-shek and the Soongs maintained that they were fighting the Japanese but it was not generally true. They were fighting Mao and his Communists while Mao was fighting the Japanese. By 1942, under pressure from the United States and Russia, the Nationalists and Communists agreed to a truce so that they could both fight against Japan. Based on the promises made to President Roosevelt by Madam Chiang, the Soongs, and Chiang himself, there was an expectation of extensive military attacks against the Japanese. The U. S. then sent a large amount of military aid to Chiang Kai-shek, but there did not appear to be any significant attacks against the Japanese other than those mounted by the Communists. Magruder, General Marshall’s emissary to Chiang Kai-shek was instructed to investigate. When the war ended, Chiang Kai-shek used the assets he was saving in to attack Mao and his communists just as he had done before the truce. Magruder had been right. However, just as Chiang could not defeat the militarily inferior Communists before the truce, he could not do so after. Soon Mao turned the tables and drove Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalists out of Mainland China. President Roosevelt had brilliantly judged the ability of England, Russia, and Yugoslavia to fight the Germans, but as this quotation and {641677} shows, he listened to the wrong people. He had been sold a “bill of goods” by the China Lobby, the Soongs and Chiang Kai-shek.
Nasser was indeed planning an attack. Israeli intelligence had discovered it, and the Israeli’s informed President Lyndon Johnson who in turn called Kosygin. Nasser and the Arabs had miscalculated again and ended up being not only defeated in the war they wanted but totally embarrassed by the incredibly poor performance of the Arab armies who greatly outnumbered the Israelis but had no stomach for a fight.
The quotation is notable as it illustrates the great difficulty that modern democracies have with extreme Islamic fundamentalists. Their very perception and world view is so different that often we think of the extremists as insane and they often feel the same way about us.
After the First World War, the United States and other countries were very conscious of the possibility of foreign arms sales encouraging and facilitating war and aggression. Therefore, arms shipments were very limited. The exception allowed tyrannical governments often to suppress, and often kill, their own citizens. By the end of the 20th century, the United States would sell arms to almost anyone and was the largest arms supplier in the world. Much of the flip flop of position on arms exports was caused by the fact that other nations were shipping arms and getting the jobs and profits associated with those exports and almost anyone in the world with money could buy arms. So the United States allowed its arms manufacturers to compete in this lucrative business to all but a few arms embargoed nations with whom we were having international difficulty.
sending American troops to Vietnam
Most experts believe that this objective was sustained all through the Afghanistan War in the early 21st century.
They almost certainly did when they put down some protests / demonstrations during the Arab Spring. Sophisticated allies point out that the United States (Ohio National Guard) troops that killed the peaceful anti-Vietnam War protesters did so with American made weapons.
A few months later, that is exactly what Germany did. She was hoping that England would not enter the war despite her treaty obligations, but she was willing to risk the possibility. The Czar had a strong espionage and intelligence service active in Germany, but, like so many other intelligence failures, the intelligence operatives and analysts had military and economic facts but had little understanding of the German culture which propelled Germany to what to most other cultures was “irrational policy making.” People and nations often engage in irrational activities, even against their own self-interest.
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, DL, FRS, RA was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, Churchill was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five constituencies. Ideologically an economic liberal and imperialist, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party, as leader from 1940 to 1955. He was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924. Churchill was also well known for his military career and as a historian, painter and writer, and among his many awards was the Nobel Prize in Literature.
