"When we went to Bosnia the people in Bosnia welcomed us with open arms, and I would go down the street and people would come up and say, "Admiral, thank you for bringing peace to Bosnia." And my standard answer was this, "I cannot bring peace to this country. Only you can bring peace to this country. I can bring the conditions in which peace can be established, but I cannot bring peace to this country." So the mistake we have made in our country, if we have made a mistake, is that we believe that we can influence or that we can enforce a peace, and we cannot. You can stop the fighting, and we did. And you can put money into a country and you can try to build it up so that the momentum you get from a visible economic engine creates a condition where peace will take hold. But that requires a political will that is not today evident in Bosnia. It was certainly not evident when I was there. I think we are doing the right thing to put our military into these kinds of operations. No one is better able to do it. Peacekeeping is not a soldier function, but only soldiers can do it, because we've got the organization. We can make things happen in a hurry."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Why Peacekeeping is So Difficult
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Leighton_W._Smith%2C_Jr.
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Leighton W. Smith, Jr.
9 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Leighton W. Smith, Jr. →
Related Quotes
"There were a lot of people who were willing to write a letter for me. Not because I was academically inclined, but be…"
"I didn't realize it at the time, but it became apparent to me later, that I had just experienced the most incredible …"
"We went out on a very cloudy day, in an area we probably should not have been operating in, and the two of us did a m…"
"The Naval Academy is a very prestigious place, and I choose to try it. I got there and darn near didn't pass, just ab…"
"I remember a picture I saw in a paper not long before the wall came down. There was a man standing holding a very you…"
"I had a role in developing the doctrine From the Sea, which was later modified to Forward From the Sea. But the way w…"
"With Leighton Smith in charge, we've got a Navy admiral running a predominantly land campaign — the first ever in NAT…"
"Our meeting with Admiral Leighton Smith, on the other hand, did not go well. He had been in charge of the NATO air st…"
"Our Nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal."
"this country might have been a pio neer land once. but. there ain't no mo indians blowing custer's mind with a differ…"