“The United States is engaged today in a great mission to spread democracy to the Middle East, beginning with Afghanistan, and continuing with Iraq. The inhabitants of Iraq are divided into many groups and factions that hate and distrust each other. The attitude of Sunni and Shia Muslims toward each other resembles that of Catholic and Protestant Christians in the sixteenth century, which persist today in northern Ireland, each regarding the other as heretics. Under the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, the minority of Sunnis persecuted the majority Shias. It is understandable that the minority Sunnis are today resisting majority rule, while the majority Shia favor it. The Sunnis clearly believe that majority rule by Shia will be used as a means of retribution and revenge. The Sunnis look upon majority rule by the Shia the way the South looked upon the election of Lincoln in 1860. It is inconceivable to the Sunnis that the rule of the Shia majority will be anything other than tyranny. Indeed, it is inconceivable to them that any political power, whether of a minority or a majority, would be non-tyrannical. The idea of non-tyrannical government is alien to their history and their experience. They regard our assertions of Jeffersonian or Lincolnian principles as mere hypocrisy, as they see no other form of rule other than that of force. Our government assumes that the people of the Middle East, like people elsewhere, seek freedom for others no less than for themselves. But that is an assumption that has not yet been confirmed by experience.”
2000s, The Central Idea (2006)
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Harry V. Jaffa 171
American historian and collegiate professor 1918–2015Related quotes
Statement made at a meeting with President George W. Bush — reported in Olivier Knox (June 25, 2008) "Bush, Talabani work on US-Iraq security pact", Agence France-Presse.
Light (1919), Ch. XVI - De Profundis Clamavi
Context: Men have gone towards each other because of that ray of light which each of them contains; and light resembles light. It reveals that the isolated man, too free in the open expanses, is doomed to adversity as if he were a captive, in spite of appearances; and that men must come together that they may be stronger, that they may be more peaceful, and even that they may be able to live.
For men are made to live their life in its depth, and also in all its length. Stronger than the elements and keener than all terrors are the hunger to last long, the passion to possess one's days to the very end and to make the best of them. It is not only a right; it is a virtue.
On Islamic unity, in the Daily Mail (5 July 2013) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2357021/The-hate-sheikh-Home-Counties-Firebrand-cleric-fuelling-global-conflict-Muslims-sets-HQ-idyllic-village.html
Articles, 10 Things to Celebrate: Why I'm an Anti-Anti-American (June 2003)
On the American working class in “Ibram X Kendi on why not being racist is not enough” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/14/ibram-x-kendi-on-why-not-being-racist-is-not-enough in The Guardian (2019 Aug 14)
"A Model for Post-Saddam Iraq", American Enterprise Institute (October 3, 2002)
All three of the above are from "Future Quayle Quotes We Can Expect to Hear" by Al Jaffee, in MAD magazine, (October 1991), pp. 10–11
Cited in [John Kerry or George W. Bush Misquotes, http://www.snopes.com/quotes/candidate.asp, snopes.com, 2008-12-31, 2004-09-22, Barbara Mikkelson]
Misattributed