Withdrawal of US troops will become like salted peanuts to the American public: The more US troops come home, the more will be demanded.
Interpretation
The return of US troops will create a continuous desire for more withdrawals by the public.
Henry A. Kissinger's quote reflects on the American public's appetite for the withdrawal of US troops from conflicts. It suggests that as troops return home, the public's expectations and demands for further withdrawals will increase, drawing a parallel to how salted peanuts create an insatiable desire for more due to their satisfying nature.
In practice
In a political speech discussing military strategy.
Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed. History is a tale of efforts that failed, or aspirations that werenβt realized. So, as a historian, one has to live with a sense of the inevitability of tragedy.
Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.
It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
If peace is equated simply with the absence of war, it can become abject pacifism that turns the world over to the most ruthless.
What political leaders decide, intelligence services tend to seek to justify.
There seems to be an increasing awareness of something we Americans have known for some time - that the ten most dangerous words in the English language are "Hi, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."
I have never regarded politics as the arena of morals. It is the arena of interest.
If economic progress is not translated into better quality of life and respect for citizens' rights, we will witness more Tahrir Squares in Africa.
A political convention is after all not a meeting of a corporation's board of directors; it is a fiesta, a carnival, a pig-rooting, horse-snorting, band-playing, voice-screaming medieval get-together of greed, practical lust, compromised idealism, career-advancement, meeting, feud, vendetta, conciliation, of rabble-rousers, fist fights (as it used to be), embraces, drunks (again as it used to be) and collective rivers of animal sweat.
Political ignorance helps explain Americans' perpetual disappointment with politicians generally, and presidents especially, to whom voters unrealistically attribute abilities to control events.
I'm tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. We are supposed to work it.
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