Henry B.F. Macfarland Quotes

Fiction is a very powerful tool for teaching history. The Philippines was the first Iraq, the first Vietnam, the first Afghanistan, in the sense that it was the United States' initial or baptismal experience in nation-building.

I've always admired President Chavez for standing up to imperialism and the meddling of the American government in South America.

Most governments in the United States in a hundred years have not respected the peoples of Latin America. They have sponsored coup d'etats, assassinations.

My husband and brother—in—law had been treacherously killed with either the official or unofficial blessing of the American government… No one can seriously believe in the disclaimer that the Americans have nothing to do with the present situation in Vietnam.

The mission of the United States [to the Philippine Islands] is one of benevolent assimilation, submitting the mild sway of justice and right for arbitrary rule.

There may be a limit beyond which many Americans and much of the world will not permit the United States to go.

It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”

They [the anti-imperialist Senators] are little better than traitors. We shall be branded with the steel of clinging shame if we leave the Philippines to fall into a welter of bloody anarchy instead of taking hold of them and governing them with righteousness and justice, in the interest of their own people even more than the interests of ours.

Vietnam was God’s instrument for bringing the American empire to its knees.

The American people are sick of our failed regime change wars.

The United States was born with an imperialist impulse. There has been a long confrontation between Monroe and Bolivar... It is necessary that the Monroe Doctrine be broken.

American imperialism has suffered a stunning defeat in Indochina. But the same forces are engaged In another war against a much less resilient enemy, the American people. Here, the prospects for success are much greater. The battleground is ideological, not military. At stake are the lessons to be drawn from the American war in Indochina; the outcome will determine the course and character of new imperial ventures.

Mr. President, call the toady of American imperialism to order.

The U.S. has made a lot of mistakes all over the world... look at Iraq. The country that makes such mistakes do not have the moral right to teach the world.

Millions of ordinary Americans may suffer from a toxic combination of ignorance and amnesia, but the victims of U.S. coups, invasions, and bombing campaigns across the globe tend not to. Ask the Iraqis or the Iranians, ask the Cubans or the Chileans. And, yes, ask the North Koreans.

Laos is the ghost of American military interventions past.

In the 19th century, we didn't much like the loud annexationist voices south of the border or American support for Sinn Fein adventurers who thought, by seizing the Canadian colonies, they could force Britain out of Ireland.

America never formally surrenders, so we have to call surrender something else. In Vietnam, we called it Vietnamization.

So what if America loses its empire? We never should have had one in the first place.

I profoundly do not believe that the United States could make things better in Syria by being there. And we have an evidentiary record of what happens when we're there - nearly a decade in Iraq.

Voters have consistently brought up the topic of 'endless wars' and demands to 'bring the troops home' to me since I ran for office. It's not a left-right issue, either: Both sides question our military presence abroad.

It's hard to be a national punch line unless lots of voters have soured on you.

Nowadays, it has become a custom to criticise the BJP for everything.

If you don't like being attacked for your point of view, you shouldn't be in politics in the first place.

Between 1831 and 1891, US armed forces - usually the Marines - invaded Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Panama, Colombia, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Brazil, Haiti, Argentina, and Chile a total of thirty-one times, a fact not many of us are informed about in school. The Marines intermittently occupied Nicaragua form 1909 to 1933, Mexico from 1914 to 1919, and Panama from 1903 to 1914. To 'restore order' the Marines occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934, killing over two thousand Haitians who resisted 'pacification.'