A Quote by Michael Ignatieff
I was with the U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali on the day that Srebrenica fell, which happened to be a huge historical turning point in the Bosnian war.
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I happened to happened to land in a time, in the middle '60s, that without knowing it, and without being told by the history of theater - which we now see from a historical point of view was an explosive time.
If the U.N. secretary-general withdraws the inspectors from Baghdad ... this means that the secretary-general has abandoned its own responsibility in maintaining peace and security in the world.
September 11, 2001, was a terrible tragedy by any measure, but it was not a historical turning point. It did not herald a new era of international relations in which terrorists with a global agenda prevailed or in which such spectacular terrorist attacks became commonplace.
We know darned well that in Bosnia, certain governments and the secretary had said tens of thousands are needed in Srebrenica and those people were never provided.
What happened in World War II was what happened in war generally, and that was whatever the initiating cause, and however clear the moral reason is for the war in which one side looks better than the other, by the time the war ends both sides have been engaged in evil.
I didn't run off with the secretary. It made it seem like I had committed adultery and then ran off with a secretary, neither of which happened.
Something is happening to Britain and the British. Or has happened. We are said to be passing through a transition, or a turning point, or a transformation; nobody is quite sure which.
My mother is Bosnian. Obviously I understand the language. Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, it's all the same.
I remember being on film sets when I was younger, and only men got to do the cool action movies. So I thought, 'Maybe I'll get to produce one day and get to do cool stuff too,' which is what happened when we did 'Charlie's Angels.' Starting my production company was a big turning point for me.
Srebrenica was a horrendous war crime and it had to be uncovered.
Both Bush as well, as Tony Blair, are undermining an idea which was sponsored by their predecessors. They do not care. Is it because the secretary-general of the United Nations [Ghanaian Kofi Annan] is now a black man? They never did that when secretary-generals were white.
Let that man be a Bosnian, Herzegovinian. Outside they don't call you by another name, except simply a Bosnian. Whether that be a Muslim (Bosniak), Serb or Croat. Everyone can be what they feel that they are, and no one has a right to force a nationality upon them.
You think you're writing one historical novel and it turns into three, and I'm quite used to a short story turning into a novel - that's happened through my whole career.
The UN was very media-shy, and its relationship with the press was very controlled; although periodically I spoke to the press, the rule was, only the secretary-general speaks to the press; only the secretary-general makes... So you would see many situations where under-secretaries-general would come in and speak. I opened that, and I encouraged all of them to speak in their areas, whether it was peacekeeping or humanitarian efforts.
When I was at Stratford, the very first thing that I was commissioned to work on was trying to make a musical out of the documentary material about the General Strike, which was the next big historical event in England, after the First World War.
We have known the bitterness of defeat and the exultation of triumph, and from both we have learned there can be no turning back. We must go forward to preserve in peace what we won in war. A new era is upon us. Even the lesson of victory itself brings with it profound concern, both for our future security and the survival of civilization. The destructiveness of the war potential, through progressive advances in scientific discovery, has in fact now reached a point which revises the traditional concepts of war.
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