Ambassadors Of The United States

"With the political opposition well in hand, they went after the religious groups. Now I should like to make it very clear that attack on religion is not so much a matter of conflict between church and state as between the secular religion of Marxist materialism and the traditional religion of the churches based on moral and spiritual values. It is an attack on Protestant, Catholic, Jew, and Moslem alike, and it isn't just an attack on the churches, but on all free institutions and human freedoms. It is materialism versus morality. It is violence and treachery versus order and humanity. Communist morality has been expressed in these words of Lenin, "everything is moral which is necessary for the annihilation of the old exploiting social order, and for uniting the proletariat.""

"His tact and firmness and his Catholic faith were of immense service to all in solving many complicated questions of these early days. He was devoted to his Church, and was very charitable but unostentatiously so. He helped many deserving students to a Catholic education."

"Hattie Babbitt has been a distinguished public servant, and the Center is delighted that she will be joining its community of public policy scholars"

"I am committed to interdisciplinary scholarship that crosses traditional sector lines. The Wilson Center provides an ideal setting for such work."

"She will be an asset for the Center, and I know many of our scholars will want to draw on her extensive experience. Her work on issues of globalization, the information technology revolution, and the U.S. response capability to these post-Cold War developments dovetails with several key themes being emphasized in the Center's ongoing work."

"For some, the implementation of cultural diplomacy is not done on a playing field when all participants are free of impediments, as minor as they may seem in comparison to the past. I do not mean to imply that in these relationships we should indicate any special concern or in any way indicate a desire to compensate for the past, but these are the facts that mature and well-balanced people should be aware of and take into consideration."

"I'd say the aspect of the communism of the Chinese or Russians which wasn't marketable was the atheism. The Africans were sort of a naturally spiritual people and it was hard to communicate that."

"It was very clear the key office for an ambassador is the Department of State, the Office of Foreign Affairs. So you get right down to a small number of people. My own personal style was not too over do it but to keep in touch and to be available."

"He was more than a diplomat who served as a U.S. ambassador, he was a person who was convinced that there was a way to make things better. He spent his time working to bring people together, and always with the goal for a more peaceful world. He felt that the protocols that exist in life are a way to show good manners and to be respectful of people, and it didn’t matter what political party you belonged to."

"The effectiveness of Tom Melady was enhanced by his prior experience as an ambassador in Central Africa and as a university president. He was able to move between the different interests of the Church internationally and he offered something special."

"He made a significant contribution, not only teaching, but going out of his way to mentor both students and interns."

"The family of man must accept responsibility for the suffering of other members of the family. Over 150,000 bodies are buried in the foothills of Burundi. I write with a feeling of great sadness, for I see no end to the business. The work of reducing age-old hatreds and fears is long and difficult. Armenia, Ireland, Malaysia, Cyprus, Canada and Belgium comprise a sad and unended litany of horror. Perhaps there are lessons to be retrieved from the Burundi experience."

"Perhaps more than ever, the modern world requires the Holy See's "soft power" of persuasion rather than coercion, to drive a diplomacy based on ideas and fundamental human rights—and needs to provide a possibility of conflict resolution without military intervention."

"Not at all. Even during the period that the United States was out of the Paris Agreement, our companies continued to innovate. We continued to reduce our carbon output. I’m from California which has two important roles. One, it’s a state like Greece with a strong grassroots focus on the quality of the environment. It’s also a state, because it is the fifth or sixth largest economy in the world which actually has the ability to set the standards on its own in our federal system, which then ripple out across the United States and across the rest of the world. California has moved very aggressively on energy transition, very aggressively on deployment of wind power and solar, and frankly, is a perfect match for Greece because we have a very similar geography, we have a very similar climate, and we also face the same imperative to protect our climate. For me, it was so poignant that at exactly the moment that I was looking through the smoke-filled skies of Athens, I was also reading the stories from home in California where we have literally the largest fires that my home state has ever confronted, driven by exactly the same extreme weather events which are a consequence of manmade climate change."

"As the fighting has now reached densely populated areas and across the country, we expect child casualties to increase. We also expect the displacement crisis to continue growing rapidly. As of yesterday, UNHCR was reporting an excess of 1.7 million refugees fleeing to hosting countries. Half of the people on the move are children. UNICEF is working closely with UNHCR to reach them with protection and assistance in receiving countries."

"The past eight years of conflict in Ukraine have already inflicted profound and lasting harm to children. With the escalation of the conflict, the immediate and very real threat to Ukraine’s 7.5 million children has grown. Homes, schools, orphanages, and hospitals have all come under attack. Civilian infrastructure like water and sanitation facilities have been hit, leaving millions without access to safe water. For many, life has moved underground as families seek safety in shelters, subways, or basements, often for hours on end. Women are giving birth in makeshift maternity wards with limited medical supplies. Most stores are closed, making it hard for people to buy essential items, including basic necessities for children like diapers and medication. And even if stores were open, millions of people are too afraid to venture outside for food or water because of continuous shelling and shooting. The intensification of the armed conflict is posing severe human costs, which are increasing exponentially by the day."

"I do believe it's very important for the government of Honduras to continue their relationship with the government of Taiwan. I think it can be beneficial, obviously. It has been in the past, and I think it will continue to be so."

"Leopold's Congo state is guilty of crimes against humanity."

"I accuse Leopold's officials of tyranny, i accuse Leopold's government of excessive cruelty, ox chains eaten to the necks of prisoners and produce sores about which flies circle, the courts are aborted unjust and delinquent, not one state official knows the language of the natives, your majesties' government is engaged in slave trade, wholesale and retail."

"The United States has a special responsibility, because it introduced this African government on the International arena."

"Somehow, acting brings out parts of your personality that maybe you didn’t know were there, or the character brings out some little part of you that has been dormant for your whole life, you know? And then when you get the chance to play these characters, some-times things come out of you that are quite surprising and that you don’t even know are inside of you. It’s an amazing thing to experience that."

"I love simple things, I’m not really that turned on by the grandiosity of celebrity and fame. I love beautiful things... and I so appreciate all of the amazing experiences I get to have, and the finer things in life. But the things that really make me happy and re-ally touch my heart are just incredibly simple. I think I’ve always been that way my whole life."

"I love being engaged, but I don’t really have a desire to get married, I always felt like marriage should be more of a reward... For surviving your relationship... I feel everyone’s got it backwards"

"I never really liked too much attention, which can be good and bad, if someone gives me a compliment it just goes in one ear and out the other, and if someone says something really horrible it’s the same. I just learned not to value my self-esteem and who I am as a person on the popularity of a film or how famous I am at the time. I guess I had the perspective of how it can be there one time and not another. And life is the most exciting part, really living, you know?"

"I see and appreciate beauty in my weird little way. It’s easy to buy presents or make romantic gestures, but the more simple things demonstrate you really know someone – that’s what I find sexy and romantic. Being romantic is knowing what makes the person you love happy."

"Performing. That gratification you get when people are enjoying themselves or you see an arm go around a shoulder or somebody grab a hand. It's nice to know that you're part of that particular moment of their lives."

"From what I was taught at home, I already knew what I was doing and how to act and how to dress and how to speak. I came from a safe, solid home."

"I’m not a marcher, I’m a doer…I believe I was the first [African American woman] to win a Grammy in the pop arena, which was basically almost designated for white people..So it was kind of unheard of. I was probably the first person in a lot of areas."

"Wars, segregation, everything that the entire world is going through, emotionally, mentally and physically, it’s in a sad state right now…There’s segregation going on in the States, and segregation going on in the UK. There’s segregation going on everywhere, it’s still the same."

"Well I was concerned, back even at that early age of not quite 28, that as an African American woman entering the field of national security and foreign policy for the first time, that if I accepted a job in African policy at that stage without having demonstrated my ability to work on a wider range of issues, I feared, I think legitimately, ... that I might well get pigeonholed in Africa. That people in this predominantly white national security establishment would see me as black working on Africa — and therefore not capable of, or suited to do, anything else. And I made that choice. Looking back on it, it was quite a bracing thing to do to turn down at that age a substantive policy job."

"So much for “Democracy Dies in Darkness”. This is the most hypocritical, chicken shit move from a publication that is supposed to hold people in power to account."

"There is particular danger at the moment that powerful political alignments in the United States are pushing strongly to exacerbate the developing crisis with Russia. The New York Times, which broke the story that the Kremlin had been paying the Afghan Taliban bounties to kill American soldiers, has been particularly assiduous in promoting the tale of perfidious Moscow. Initial Times coverage, which claimed that the activity had been confirmed by both intelligence sources and money tracking, was supplemented by delusional nonsense from former Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice, who asks “Why does Trump put Russia first?” before calling for a “swift and significant U.S. response.” Rice, who is being mentioned as a possible Biden choice for Vice President, certainly knows about swift and significant as she was one of the architects of the destruction of Libya and the escalation of U.S. military and intelligence operations directed against a non-threatening Syria."

"I was blessed by parents who had come from pretty limited, modest circumstances, and had risen to the top of their fields. My father, in the field of economics, became a governor of the Federal Reserve. My mother coming from Jamaican immigrants to Maine, rose to be a leader in the corporate world, and a person who was known as the mother of Pell Grants. So I was blessed to have parents who taught me from a very early stage that I could do what I set out to do. And while I lived in a society, you know, having been born here in Washington in the 1960s, where clearly racism and prejudice were a major factor, they taught me in a very unusual way not to allow that to diminish my own sense of self. So whether I was a rare minority in a predominantly white elite girls school here in Washington D.C., or at Stanford or Oxford where I did my graduate studies, I was accustomed to not being in any way oblivious to the fact that I was a minority. I was very conscious of that, but I didn't allow it to diminish my sense of worth and my sense of commitment to doing my best…"

"I was close to President Obama and he was a target…I'm an African American woman. I don't take crap off of people. And I'm confident in my own skin… Putting all that together, put it in a political context of the campaign, and maybe I was an attractive target."

"Public service, serving my community and my country, are very much a part of who I am, and I will always, always consider service of some nature to my community, and to my state and to my country. So, who knows what the future will bring."

"I decided to run to become the Lafayette township committee woman, and I served in that position for nine years. It’s probably the most grassroots neighborhood, neighbor-to-neighbor kind of politics one can do. It’s very important to keep in touch with the real people out there and to learn at the most basic level how to activate and turn out the grassroots"

"We all have a share in it, and none of it is good. There are no heroes, just bums. I include myself in that."

"I have been among the officers who have said that a large land war in Asia is the last thing we should undertake. Most of us, when we use that term, are thinking about getting into a land war against Red China. That's the only power in Asia which would require us to use forces in very large numbers. I was slow in joining with those who recommended the introduction of ground forces in South Vietnam. But it became perfectly clear that because of the rate of infiltration from North Vietnam to South Vietnam something had to be done."

"First, we didn't know ourselves. We thought we were going into another Korean war, but this was a different country. Secondly, we didn't know our South Vietnamese allies. We never understood them, and that was another surprise. And we knew even less about North Vietnam. Who was Ho Chi Minh? Nobody really knew. So, until we know the enemy and know our allies and know ourselves, we'd better keep out of this dirty kind of business. It's very dangerous."

"For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?"

"Give me three days and three nights of hard fighting, and you will be relieved."

"Unfortunately, while the 7th Division scored significant tactical successes, the country was convulsed by new political turmoil. On December 23, 1964, some young generals arrested five members of the National High Council, a body of respected politicians created in the fall of 1963 to advise and oversee the civilian government. The latter was headed at that time by Chief of State Phan Khac Suu and Prime Minister Tran Van Huong. The arrested members were accused of pro-Communist sentiments by the military. The following day, General Maxwell Taylor summoned the "Young Turks" who emerged as the new leaders of South Viet Nam and reprimanded them for having created a "real mess" in Saigon. General Taylor complained that in one year he had had to deal with five governments, meaning five different sets of senior generals and five different sets of province chiefs. It was ironic for General Taylor to complain because he was partially to blame for the next political upheaval which was to trigger the departure of General Khanh."

"In the late 1950s, when Taylor was the Army chief under the Eisenhower administration, I served in his office as the deputy secretary of the General Staff and made several official trips overseas with him. (The secretary of the General Staff at the time, then Major General William Westmoreland, coordinated the activities of the Army staff and in effect was chief of staff to the Army Chief.) General Taylor was an impressive figure, known as an intellectual, a soldier statesman, and a talented linguist. But it was an unhappy period for Taylor, who did not see eye-to-eye with the commander-in-chief or the other military chiefs as to the proper role of the Army. After he left the Army, Taylor laid out his deep misgivings about the national military establishment in a highly critical book, The Uncertain Trumpet, which caught the attention of many prominent people, including John F. Kennedy. Particularly intense and somewhat aloof during this period, Taylor appeared to those who did not know him as cold, humorless, and unbending. But he had another side- he could be friendly, a genial host, and a witty conversationalist with a well developed sense of humor. For many people, however, these more endearing qualities were not revealed until after he had retired from public life at the end of Johnson's presidency."

"From late May to late June, when home on R and R, Taylor had learned that the 101st would be shifted to the war in the Pacific. On rejoining the division, he toured individual units to muster support for the move. He ended one speech with: "We've licked the best that Hitler had in France and Holland and Germany. Now where do we want to go?" It inspired the only mass incident of insubordination, although jocular, faced by Maxwell Taylor as commander. His beloved Screaming Eagles screamed, "Home!"- no doubt punctuated by a few catcalls and Bronx cheers."

"After Christmas, General Taylor came back and took over as commander, but nobody wanted to see Taylor. Here, the guy's the commander of the 101st Airborne, and he took time off to go and have Christmas dinner in Virginia. When we found out he was in Virginia, we couldn't believe our general had left us in a spot like that, and we didn't want to hear no excuses. The guys resented it. Oh, they did, too! Nobody liked Taylor after that."

"Maxwell Taylor was one of the major American military figures of the twentieth century. He was more soldier than statesman. His major involvement in the American political scene was the Vietnam tragedy, in which his role was central but not decisive. His views were generally better than the views that did prevail. Had Diem not been eliminated and had American combat troops not been committed in 1965, who knows what might have been the result? The failure of Taylor in Vietnam decision making was not in what he did, but what he failed to do. Taylor possessed a vision and, more than most, the ability to communicate it. Perhaps his vision was sometimes flawed or perhaps he failed to communicate it when it really mattered- during Vietnam. Others may judge that for themselves. Of one thing I am certain: few twentieth-century Americans have lived fuller or more dedicated lives."

"So the future depends not only on what we do but on what other powers do. Will they join in the nuclear arms race or save their resources for later, more renumerative uses? Will they increase their productivity while we succumb to inflation and its social and economic consequences? Will they live in harmony at home while we remain riven by factionalism and terrorized by crime? Most important of all, will they choose their goals wisely and pursue them relentlessly while we flounder in aimlessness or exhaust ourselves in internecine struggles? These matters are quite as important as the decline of absolute American power in determining the equilibrium of international relations in the 1970s. One thing is sure: the international challenge tends to merge more and more with the domestic challenge until the two become virtually indistinguishable. The threats from both sources are directed at the same sources of national power which provide strength both for our national security and for our domestic welfare. It is clear, I believe, that we cannot overcome abroad and fail at home, or succeed at home and succumb abroad. To progress toward the goals of our security and welfare we must advance concurrently on both foreign and domestic fronts by means of integrated national power responsive to a unified national will."

"On Christmas Day, the Germans attacked again, but fortunately for E Company on the other side of Bastogne. The following day, Patton's Third Army, spearheaded by Lt. Col. Creighton Abrams of the 37th Tank Battalion, broke through the German lines. The 101st was no longer surrounded; it now had ground communications with the American supply dumps. Soon trucks were bringing in adequate supplies of food, medicine, and ammunition. The wounded were evacuated to the rear. General Taylor returned. He inspected the front lines, according to Winters, "very briskly. His instructions before leaving us were, 'Watch those woods in front of you!' What the hell did he think we had been doing while he was in Washington?" (Winters has a thing about Taylor. In one interview he remarked, "And now you have General Taylor coming back from his Christmas vacation in Washington..." I interrupted to say, "That's not quite fair." "Isn't it?" "Well, he was ordered back to testify..." Winters cut me off: "I don't want to be fair.")"

"Of course, the media did not have to manufacture dissent and antiwar feeling in the United States; there was enough of the real article to provide them with legitimate subject matter. Every war critic capable of producing a headline contributed, in proportion to his eminence, some comfort if not aid to the enemy. Unfortunately, from 1967 onward there was no shortage of eminent figures among the opponents of the war willing to make this contribution."

"The atomic explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki provided a new case for the decisive character of strategic bombing. The atomic bomb offered air power a new weapon with tremendously increased destructiveness and encouraged once more the belief that an ultimate weapon was in the hands of our Air Force which would allow the United States to impose a sort of Pax Americana on the world. The corollary to this belief was that conventional military forces would have little or no value in the new era."