Flotsam and Jetsam 0003

Paul Soglin, bike friendly former mayor of Madison, Wisconsin: On Bush, Fulbright, and Vietnam

Some key Fulbright quotes cited by Soglin are listed below.

• We have the power to do any damn fool thing we want to do, and we seem to do it about every 10 minutes.
• We are trying to remake Vietnamese society, a task which certainly cannot be accomplished by force and which probably cannot be accomplished by any means available to outsiders.
• The rapprochement of peoples is only possible when differences of culture and outlook are respected and appreciated rather than feared and condemned, when the common bond of human dignity is recognized as the essential bond for a peaceful world.
• The cause of our difficulties in southeast Asia is not a deficiency of power but an excess of the wrong kind of power which results in a feeling of impotence when it fails to achieve its desired ends.
• The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust our own government statements. I had no idea until then that you could not rely on them.
• Power tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is particularly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor, conferring upon it a special responsibility for other nations - to make them richer and happier and wiser, to remake them, that is, in its own shining image.