."....Wilson's famous message to Benedict XV...breathed more or less the same spirit. The German People might be fine, the letter said, but its government had to go. And indeed after the war Germany and Austria were saddled with regimes whose character was dictated by the Allies---the alternative being the hunger blockade. Any historian could have told the victors that political forms imposed by a triumphant enemy neverlast....
Needless to say Wilson suffered from the Great American Malady, the belief that people the world over are "more alike than unalike"..."
... It is presumptuous and insulting to suggest that a whole region of the world -- or the one-fifth of humanity that is Muslim -- is somehow untouched by the most basic aspirations of life. Human cultures can be vastly different. Yet the human heart desires the same good things, everywhere on Earth. In our desire to be safe from brutal and bullying oppression, human beings are the same. In our desire to care for our children and give them a better life, we are the same. For these fundamental reasons, freedom and democracy will always and everywhere have greater appeal than the slogans of hatred and the tactics of terror. (Applause.)...
"...in other words, that non-Americans are nothing more than inhibited, underdeveloped could-be Americans with the misfortune of speaking a different language..... "
...Some say the same of Iraq today. They are mistaken. (Applause.) The nation of Iraq -- with its proud heritage, abundant resources and skilled and educated people -- is fully capable of moving toward democracy and living in freedom. (Applause.)
The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder. They encourage the peaceful pursuit of a better life. And there are hopeful signs of a desire for freedom in the Middle East....
"...When it came to the showdown at the conference table in Paris, Lloyd George himself a Methodist Machiavelli, said that he was wedged in between a man who thought he was Napoleon (Clemenceau) and another who thought he was Jesus Christ (Wilson)...."
...The United States and other nations are working on a road map for peace. We are setting out the necessary conditions for progress toward the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security. It is the commitment of our government -- and my personal commitment -- to implement the road map and to reach that goal. Old patterns of conflict in the Middle East can be broken, if all concerned will let go of bitterness, hatred, and violence, and get on with the serious work of economic development, and political reform, and reconciliation. America will seize every opportunity in pursuit of peace. And the end of the present regime in Iraq would create such an opportunity. (Applause.)
"...The ignorance of the former president of Princeton in matters of history and geography was simply prodigious.....Woodrow Wilson's greatest guilt, nevertheless, lay in his attitude during the war, in his flat refusal to cooperate in any peace efforts and in his determination to carry the war to the bitter end, thus laying the foundations for the next one...."
...I've listened carefully, as people and leaders around the world have made known their desire for peace. All of us want peace. The threat to peace does not come from those who seek to enforce the just demands of the civilized world; the threat to peace comes from those who flout those demands. If we have to act, we will act to restrain the violent, and defend the cause of peace. And by acting, we will signal to outlaw regimes that in this new century, the boundaries of civilized behavior will be respected. (Applause.) Protecting those boundaries carries a cost....
"...World War I, surely, is a far more crucial historic event than most Americans credit. Modern Man is over occupied with stems and leaves; he willfully disregards the roots...."
....In his endeavors to foist on Europe a form of government bound to fail (as a semihieratic, semi-aristocratic Catholic monarchy would have in, say, Vermont), Wilson was...just a "plain American". He was convinced that the formula to his success in the United States---fostering American popular notions--could be repeated as successfully in the rest of the world. He once said that "the best leaders are those with ordinary opinions and extraordinary abilities, those who uphold the opinions of the generation in which they live, and hold it with such vitality, perceive it with such excessive insight, that they can walk at the front and show the paths by which the things generally purposed can be accomplished." This is nothing more than the despicable principle of that great demagogue, Ledru-Rollin: "I am their leader so I have to follow them!"...."
... Much is asked of America in this year 2003. The work ahead is demanding. It will be difficult to help freedom take hold in a country that has known three decades of dictatorship, secret police, internal divisions, and war. It will be difficult to cultivate liberty and peace in the Middle East, after so many generations of strife. Yet, the security of our nation and the hope of millions depend on us, and Americans do not turn away from duties because they are hard. We have met great tests in other times, and we will meet the tests of our time. (Applause.)
We go forward with confidence, because we trust in the power of human freedom to change lives and nations. By the resolve and purpose of America, and of our friends and allies, we will make this an age of progress and liberty. Free people will set the course of history, and free people will keep the peace of the world....
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience... To be 'cured' against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level with those who have not yet reached the age of reason... You start being 'kind' to people before you have considered their rights, and then force upon them supposed kindnesses which they in fact had a right to refuse, and finally kindnesses which no one but you will recognize as kindnesses and which the recipient will feel as abominable cruelties."
.....The first to benefit from a free Iraq would be the Iraqi people, themselves. Today they live in scarcity and fear, under a dictator who has brought them nothing but war, and misery, and torture. Their lives and their freedom matter little to Saddam Hussein -- but Iraqi lives and freedom matter greatly to us. (Applause.)
Bringing stability and unity to a free Iraq will not be easy. Yet that is no excuse to leave the Iraqi regime's torture chambers and poison labs in operation. Any future the Iraqi people choose for themselves will be better than the nightmare world that Saddam Hussein has chosen for them. (Applause.)