Richard Holbrooke
Richard Holbrooke
Richard Charles Albert Holbrookewas an American diplomat, magazine editor, author, professor, Peace Corps official, and investment banker...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPublic Servant
Date of Birth24 April 1941
CountryUnited States of America
anyone cold ethnic freedom islands seas stability wants war
I'm not a wide-eyed imperialist who wants to see Americans manning outposts all over the world. Not outposts to freedom in the cold war cliche, but islands of stability and seas of ethnic strife. That is not what anyone should feel comfortable seeing Americans doing.
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The male elites that run most countries are exceedingly uncomfortable with the subject of AIDS because it's a sexually transmitted disease.
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I'm a product of the Kennedy era. Kennedy's Inaugural plus the accident of Dean Rusk brought me into the government. Those were my values.
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I have worked in every - every Democratic administration since the Kennedy administration, and I know dysfunctionality when I see it.
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The United States supports the reintegration of people who have fought with the Taliban into Afghan society provided they: one, renounce al Qaeda, two, lay down their arms and renounce violence, and three, participate in the public political life of the country in accordance with the constitution.
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There's no question that the next generation of terrorists, rather than going for small, little dramas, will go for the big one. They now understand that the way to get the world's attention is not strapping bombs to themselves in a pizza parlour, but to do something so horrific it gets you into the Guinness Book of World Records for terrorism.
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By the way, if you do your job on behalf of your country, you have meetings where you put your position forward strongly, and the other side does the same thing. And I've had plenty of meetings in my career that really were heated, people yelling at each other.
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I think Americans understand that in Afghanistan, unlike in Iraq and Vietnam, we are fighting an enemy allied with the people who attacked us on 9/11.
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You have to test your hypothesis against other theories. Certainty in the face of complex situations is very dangerous.
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We should not be surprised that democracy is imperfect even in Western countries.
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People in uniform are not sacrosanct. They don't have all the answers. The use of force is a political decision at its core, in terms of its objectives; then the military, as the experts, must be brought in to tell you how to do it.
assimilate easily foreigner politics
Pakistani politics is complicated, and I think it's not something a foreigner can easily assimilate and understand.