A Quote by Lawrence Wright

I don't hold America responsible for the largely oppressive governments in the 22 Arab countries. There are repressive Arab governments that are our allies and there are those that are our nominal enemies. It doesn't make a whole lot of difference to what extent we're involved in propping up those governments.
We could not guard every water pipeline from being blown up and every tree from being uprooted. We could not prevent every murder of a worker in an orchard or a family in their beds. But it was in our power to set high price for our blood, a price too high for the Arab community, the Arab army, or the Arab governments to think it worth paying... It was in our power to cause the Arab governments to renounce 'the policy of strength' toward Israel by turning it into a demonstration of weakness.
You have countries that have lived beyond their means, with bloated governments, huge trade deficits, and people living off the government. Then you have others where poor people are working hard and underconsuming and their governments are buying all this debt and propping up the extravagant countries. All of this has to change. There's a tremendous moral hazard involved with this system.
It was in our power to set high price for our blood, a price too high for the Arab community, the Arab army, or the Arab governments to think it worth paying.
Our rights are not granted by governments. They are inherent to our nature. But it's entirely the opposite for governments: their privileges are precisely equal to only those which we suffer them to enjoy.
By far the most numerous and most flagrant violations of personal liberty and individual rights are performed by governments... The major crimes throughout history, the ones executed on the largest scale, have been committed not by individuals or bands of individuals but by governments, as a deliberate policy of those governments-that is, by the official representatives of governments, acting in their official capacity.
Governments are based pincipally on force and deception. Democratic governments are based chiefly on deception, other governments on force. And democratic governments, if you get too uppity, give up on the deception and resort to brute force, as a lot of us found out in the sixites. Those who didn't find out in the sixites will find out in the near future because we're going to have a rerun.
Because they claim to be concerned with the welfare of whole societies, governments arrogate to themselves the right to pass off as mere abstract profit or loss the human unhappiness that their decisions provoke or their negligence permits. It is a duty of an international citizenship to always bring the testimony of people's suffering to the eyes and ears of governments, sufferings for which it's untrue that they are not responsible. The suffering of men must never be a mere silent residue of policy. It grounds an absolute right to stand up and speak to those who hold power.
It was in our power to cause the Arab governments to renounce the policy of strength toward Israel by turning it into a demonstration of weakness.
It was in our power to cause the Arab governments to renounce 'the policy of strength' toward Israel by turning it into a demonstration of weakness.
And as a matter of fact, governments don't act, governments only react. The bankers make the decisions, and then governments decide how are we going to adjust to this. Government can't do anything unless the bank gives them the money to do it.
The way we live our daily lives is what most effects the situation of the world. If we can change our daily lives, then we can change our governments and can change the world. Our president and governments are us. They reflect our lifestyle and our way of thinking. The way we hold a cup of tea, pick up the newspaper or even use toilet paper are directly related to peace.
Even non-democratic allies no longer trust America. Barack Obama has alienated our most important and longest standing Arab allies, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Both the anti-Muslim Brotherhood and the anti-Iran Arab states have lost respect for him.
As a general rule, governments are unlimited in their powers. All free governments, perhaps all other governments, are entitled in some shape or other to make laws and to repeal or amend them.
There are numerous issues that governments used to deal with that they now no longer deal with to the same extent: Prisons have been privatized in a number of countries; education and health are becoming privatized. Governments don't have the capacity to deliver - or not in isolation.
I'll be honest, there have been times when I've listened to the rhetoric in Europe where an easy equivalent somehow between the United States and Russia and between how our governments operate versus other governments operate, where those distinctions aren't made.
As I write in 2012 we certainly do not believe that it is over yet, and the worst may be yet to come. Efforts by governments to solve the underlying problems responsible for the crisis have still not gotten very far, and the 'stress tests' that governments have used to encourage optimism about our financial institutions were of questionable thoroughness.
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