Dissident Veteran For Peace: Quotable: Arms Control--The Joke's on You

Dissident Veteran For Peace

"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America." —Alexis de Tocquevile. Democracy in America, Book I, Chapter XV.

With a nod to the Most Rev. Dom Helder Camara: When I support Palestinians some call me an 'anti-Semite', when I try to explain why I stand in solidarity with Palestinians they call me a Nazi.

"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." —Major General Smedley Butler, USMC (ret.)

"... no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end." —character of O'Brien in 1984, part 3, ch. 3 by George Orwell.

"Every prophet has realized that nobody loves you for being the enemy of their illusions. Every prophet has realized that most of us want peace at any price as long as the peace is ours and somebody else pays the price. That is why the prophet Jeremiah said, ' "Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace,' ..." —The Rev. William Sloane Coffin. "Not to Bring Peace, But a Sword."

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Quotable: Arms Control--The Joke's on You

US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger commenting to Israeli Defense Minister General Moshe Dayan on Israel's proposed disengagement plan with Syria: It is like Admiral Moorer presenting a SALT [Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty] plan. It is probably exactly what you have got there now. Our military have discovered that arms control is a way to expand armaments; you build up to a compulsory ceiling.

Dayan: At least I am in good company.

Kissinger: Do you have that much there [in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights] now?

Dayan: We don't have that much there now. [Laughter] That is why we want more tanks.

Later in the memo (pp. 16-17) the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Simcha Dinitz, and other jokingly remark on his ability to manipulate the American media.

Source: Declassified secret White House "Memorandum of Conversation." The memo documents a high-level discussion which took place on March 29, 1974. p. 4.

Labels: Israel, militarism, quotations, War, Zionism