A Quote by H. R. McMaster
When we came to Iraq, we didn't understand the complexity - what it meant for a society to live under a brutal dictatorship with ethnic and sectarian divisions. When we first got here, we made a lot of mistakes. We were like a blind man, trying to do the right thing but breaking a lot of things.
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I have made some mistakes. No, a lot of mistakes. If you want to develop a new thing, a lot of mistakes will be inevitable. We should be allowed to make mistakes.
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.
Not looking for excuses is the right thing to do. I have made a lot of mistakes, and I still make mistakes, but I am not ashamed to look for the reasons behind those mistakes.
As a young boy, I did a lot of foolish things. I made a lot of mistakes. And you live and learn.
I made a lot of mistakes growing up, trying so hard to fit in. I got so lost trying to please everybody.
I certainly have no regrets about overthrowing Saddam Hussein. I'd do it again. And, yes, there are a lot of things that I think we'd all do differently. Maybe we made some erroneous assumptions about the fabric of the society in Iraq and about the solidity of some of the institutions. And yes, there are a lot of things I would do differently. I'd probably work to rebuild Iraq from the outside in, rather than concentrating so much on Baghdad, for instance.
I spent a lot of time, a lot of energy trying to be a better artist and I still [do]. I spend a lot of time focusing on my craft. If you're going to take your passion into something beyond just something for fun on the side, you got to spend a lot of time on it to be great, and then you've got to make smart decisions about who you collaborate with [and] where you live [to] put yourself in the right situations to meet the right people to catch those breaks.
I needed to do a lot of saying no. I had a lot of [interest] from people who I just didn't think were quite right for it. And I didn't want a bad film to be made of the book, either a sentimental one or a creepy one, so I did a lot of, "No thank you." Then when the right filmmaker came along, yes, I suppose I presented myself very much as wanting to be the writer.
Hitler's dictatorship differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. His was the first dictatorship in the present period of technical development, a dictatorship which made complete use of all technical means for the domination of its own country. Through technical means like the radio and the loud-speaker, eighty million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man.
I don't like a lot of things like [Iraq], I never did. Being in a position of celebrity and having your words carry such unnatural weight...I've always been a bit squeamish when it came to that kind of thing.
Sectarian politics gets votes in Iraq. But sectarian government fails in Iraq.
The truth is, it's a totalitarian dictatorship when you're making films. You are the boss. You can listen to other people, and it can be a benevolent dictatorship, but it's a dictatorship nonetheless. A lot of directors go past their first experience, that's what they've come away with.
I've always made things either paintings, drawing, photographs, or writing. It's all kind of the same thing. It all involves saying more, I guess. It involves separating life, breaking off this chunk that's devoted to making something. There's a lot of pleasure in that, but there can also be a lot of struggle. There's always this fantasy that you could just live life and not have to think about it.
Of course I made many boo-boos. At first this broke my heart, but then I came to understand that learning how to fix one's mistakes, or live with them, was an important part of becoming a cook.
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Little Britain… ever since it first came on… I come here a lot, we have a lot of friends here, my wife used to work with a lot of Brits, so we were always keyed into the hot shows when they first came out. So, I fell in love with Little Britain.
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