"You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and I will win."

~  Ho Chi Minh to the French, late 1940's

"We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening."

~ Ronald Reagan, 1964

"We seem bent upon saving the Vietnamese from Ho Chi Minh, even if we have to kill them and demolish their country to do it....I do not intend to remain silent in the face of what I regard as a policy of madness which, sooner or later, will envelop my son and American youth by the millions for years to come."

~ George McGovern, speech to U.S. Senate, April 25, 1967

"It became necessary to destroy the town to save it."

~ Unidentified U.S. Army major, on decision to bomb Bentre, Vietnam, February 7, 1968

"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."

~ Jeane Kirkpatrick, 1979

back to Ohio