A Quote by Stephen Kinzer

During the Cold War, America took sides not only in disputes between Arab countries, but also in debates within them. — © Stephen Kinzer
During the Cold War, America took sides not only in disputes between Arab countries, but also in debates within them.
It is notorious that no war between countries elicits as much hate and cruelty as civil war, in which there is no lack of acquaintance between the two warring sides.
Some people say that the West has a cruel history. These people also may see the achievements of Western countries - in terms of the economy, education, health, and social achievements - as a result of exploitation of poorer countries, including Arab countries. Western nations get rich by using resources such as Arab oil. Meanwhile, the countries supplying them raw materials remain poor. Due to such injustices, jealousies are created.
In their war against Israel's existence, the Arab governments took advantage of the Cold War. They enlisted the military, economic, and political support of the communist world against Israel, and they turned a local, regional conflict into an international powder keg.
The Arab world was ripe with hope during the spring of 2011. Journalists, academics, and the general population were brimming with expectations of a bright and free Arab society within their respective countries.
During the Cold War, tensions between the West and the Soviet Union affected virtually all countries worldwide. As a result, throughout Latin America, guerrilla groups emerged, seeking to destabilize military dictatorships and attain democracy, freedom, and policy reform - goals that they believed could not be achieved peacefully.
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.
There is something very consistent about governance in the Arab world. Among the Arab countries today in which there is a modicum of internal stability, each is controlled by an Arafat-type figure - an anti-democratic strongman who is able to crush all challenges to his authority. Likewise, among those Arab countries that aren't ruled by a despot, the political dynamic is also consistent: In Lebanon, Iraq, and now Gaza, sectarian violence is the dominant form of political expression.
In all countries, in all centuries, the primary reason for government to set up schools is to undermine the politically weak by convincing their children that the leaders are good and their policies are wise. The core is religious intolerance. The sides simply change between the Atheists, Catholics, Protestants, Unitarians, etc., depending whether you are talking about the Soviet Union, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, America, etc. A common second reason is to prepare the boys to go to war and the girls to cheer them on.
There are times when only America can make the difference between war and peace, between freedom and repression, between life death. We cannot save all the world's children but we can save many of them.
There will always be disputes between nations which, at times, will inflame the public and threaten conflicts, but the main thing is to educate the people of the world to be ever mindful that there are better means of settling such disputes than by war.
What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can't all be worth dying for.
I don't want a political party in my government that interferes in Arab countries against other Arab countries.
I found it marvelous that the great supporters of America in Europe are, of course, those countries that American consistency and firmness in the Cold War ended up liberating.
It is extremely important that mass media, having freed from the relics of the Cold War, served for peace and dialogue between nations and religions, the rich and the poor, countries and continents.
Each one of these treaties is a step for the maintenance of peace, an additional guarantee against war. It is through such machinery that the disputes between nations will be settled and war prevented.
I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong. They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries and in this. But I do say that in all disputes between them and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people.
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