“Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States could not serve as the world’s policeman; it should also have taught us the dangers of trying to be the world’s midwife to democracy when the birth is scheduled to take place under conditions of guerrilla war.”

Dictatorship and Double Standards, Commentary (New York, Nov. 1979), quoted in The Columbia World of Quotations, 1996 http://www1.bartleby.com/66/43/32843.html

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Jeane Kirkpatrick 11
American diplomat and Presidential advisor 1926–2006

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