Forums Index >> General >> Excerpts from '68: RFK on the cost of war.
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Deep..... I don't have anything to say... It's all said up there. :)
I use multi-billion dollar military satellites to find tupperware hidden in the woods... What do YOU do?
^^ what he said
Excellent, Nyar...
Bobby would have done more, if he'd had the chance... The really unfortunate thing about this is how applicable his words from 38 years ago are to our present situation.
When will we learn? :S
Last edited: Monday, June 05, 2006 at 11:14:38 AM
This is a quote from the 1996 amnesty international book Human Rights & US Security Assistance
Throughout the world, on any given day, a man, woman or child is likely to be displaced, tortured, killed or "dissapeared", at the hands of governments or armed political groups. More often than not, the United States shares the blame.
And this is a quote from the 1999 secretary of state; Madeleine Albright,
The United States is good.
We try to do our best everywhere.
... Just some useful ammo for those that way inclined
Last edited: Monday, June 05, 2006 at 11:35:17 AM
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Sen. Robert F. Kennedy
16 March, 1968
Kansas State University
"...For it is long past time to ask: what is this war doing to us? Of course it is costing us money, but that is the smallest price we pay. The cost is in the tens of thousands of lives cut off forever. The cost is in our world position -- in neutrals and allies alike, every day more baffled by and estranged from a policy they cannot understand.
"Higher yet is the price we pay in our own innermost lives, and in the spirit of our country. For the first time in a century, we have open resistance to service in the cause of the nation. For the first time perhaps in our history, we have desertions from our army on political and moral grounds. The front pages of our newspapers show photographs of American soldiers torturing prisoners. Every night we watch horror on the evening news. Violence spreads inexorably across the nation, filling our streets and crippling our lives. And whatever the costs to us, let us think of the young men we have sent there: not just the killed, but those who have to kill; not just the maimed, but also those who must look upon the results of what they do.
"It may be asked, is not such degradation the cost of all wars? Of course it is. That is why war is not an enterprise lightly to be undertaken, nor prolonged one moment past its absolute necessity. All this we would stand willingly, if it seemed to serve some worthwhile end. But the costs of the war's present course far outweigh anything we can reasonably hope to gain by it, for ourselves or for the people of Vietnam. It must be ended, and it can be ended, in a peace of brave men who have fought each other with a terrible fury, each believing he and he alone was right. We have prayed to different gods, and the prayers of neither have been answered fully. Now, while there is still time for some of them to be partly answered, now is the time to stop.
"We are entitled to ask -- we are required to ask -- how many more men, how many more lives, how much more destruction will be asked, to provide the military victory that is always just around the corner, to pour into this bottomless pit of our dreams?...This program would be far more effective than the present course of this Administration -- whose only response to failure is to repeat it on a larger scale. And therefore even this modest and reasonable program is impossible while our present leadership, under the illusion that military victory is just ahead, plunges deeper into the swamp that is our present course.
"...we are acting as if no other nation existed... Our present course will not bring victory; will not bring peace; will not stop the bloodshed; and will not advance... The cause of peace in the world."