A Quote by Kai Bird

In 1945, at the beginning of the Cold War, our leaders led us astray. We need to think of the Cold War as an aberration, a wrong turn. As such, we need to go back to where we were in 1945 - before we took the road to a permanent war economy, a national security state and a foreign policy based on unilateralism and cowboy triumphalism.

Kai Bird

Quote Topics

Aberration Astray Back Based Before Beginning Cold Cold War Cowboy Economy Foreign Foreign Policy Go Leaders Led National National Security Need Our Permanent Policy Road Security State Think Took Turn Unilateralism Us War Were Wrong Wrong Turn

Quote Author

Kai Bird
American - Author
Born: September 2, 1951

In that period, we had the Cold War mentality imbued through us - the Post-war [environment] and the Cold War. I think we were reflecting some of that. This was before the Wall collapsed, etc.

Stephen Mallinder

It is not the conservative psyche that needs analysis. Conservatives were right in the Cold War --so right that liberals are pretending they were with us all along -- and they are right about Iraq. It is Leftists who need to account for their consistently disgraceful positions throughout the Cold War and into the War on Terror.

David Limbaugh

I come out of a Cold War sensibility, a Cold War mentality, and during those Cold War years, I used to know, I thought, the answers to everything. And since the end of the Cold War, I'm just a dumb as everyone else.

Jules Feiffer

You must keep in mind that Pakistan has suffered the aftermaths of the Cold War, and that Cold War had left deep imprints on our society. We were the worst sufferers from the ills of the Afghan war.

Asif Ali Zardari

Nuclear weapons are infinitely less important in our foreign policy than they were in the days of the Cold War. I don't think we need nuclear weapons any longer.

Des Browne

I came up during the cold war, and during the cold war it was always possible with the then Soviet Union - the Russian leaders behaved carefully and predictably. They didn't engage in nuclear saber rattling. They were able to work with us and align their interests where possible.

Ashton Carter

Particularly when the war power is invoked to do things to the liberties of people, or to their property or economy that only indirectly affect conduct of the war and do not relate to the engagement of the war itself, the constitutional basis should be scrutinized with care. ... I would not be willing to hold that war powers may be indefinitely prolonged merely by keeping legally alive a state of war that had in fact ended. I cannot accept the argument that war powers last as long as the effects and consequences of war for if so they are permanent -- as permanent as the war debts.

Robert H. Jackson

We've suffered a war, and one thing we know: Whenever our nation's faced war, whether it was in the 1980s when we were winning the Cold War or in the 1940s during World War II, the responsible thing to do has been to borrow money to win the war.

Ken Mehlman

The cold war was the longest war in United States history. Because of the nuclear capabilities of our enemy it was the most dangerous conflict our country ever faced. Those that won this war did so in obscurity. Those that gave their lives in the cold war have never been properly honored.

Harry Reid

A national government using New Deal programs and the massive defense spending beginning with World War II and continuing through the Cold War was Johnson's vehicle for expanding the Southern economy and making it, as he hoped, one of the more prosperous regions of the country.

Robert Dallek

After World War II, American leaders were, in Dean Acheson's words, 'present at the creation' of a global order. Now at the end of the cold war, we desperately need that same vision, that leadership, that creativity to be applied to the governance of the global marketplace.

John J. Sweeney

Both World War II and the subsequent Cold War gave America's involvement in world affairs a clear focus. The objectives of foreign policy were relatively easy to define, and they could be imbued with high moral content.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

For Americans of the Greatest Generation that fought World War II and of the Silent Generation that came of age in the 1950s, the great moral and ideological cause was the Cold War. It gave purpose and clarity to our politics and foreign policy, and our lives.

Pat Buchanan

The costly unilateralism of the younger Bush presidency led to a decade of war in the Middle East and the derailment of American foreign policy at large.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

If you took the profit out of war, there would be no war. What the hell do you think war is? You think we go to another country to bring democracy? We go there 'cause there's oil, resources or something we need.