"Only immediate assertion of leadership by the United States could prevent war in the next decade...The President and the Secretary of State must shock the country into a realization of its peril..."
Dean Acheson
" Mr President," I said, " I have to tell you something. I don't want to get too close to you." He looked startled. I imagine it was a rare thing for a U.S. Commander - in - chief to hear. " Canada is your best friend, largest trading partner, and closest ally, but we are also an independent country. Keeping some distance will be good for both of us. If we look as though we're the fifty - first state of the United States, there is nothing we can do for you internationally, just as the governor of a state can't do anything for you internationally. But if we look independent enough, we can do things for you that even the CIA cannot do."
Jean Chretien
That won't do at all .. we've got to have this .. I don't mind for myself, but I don't want any other Foreign Secretary of this country to be talked to or at by a Secretary of State in the United States as I have just had in my discussions with Mr Byrnes. We've got to have this thing over here whatever it costs .. We've got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it.
Ernest Bevin
The misquote is notable for the emphasis on the Constitution rather the government of the United States; for using the word "fail" (sometimes, "fall"), rather than "destroyed", which opens up a line of argument that Webster was concerned about the Constitution being misinterpreted, in legal cases; and that worldwide anarchy could result from something happening in the United States, something fairly unthinkable in the first half of the 19th century, when the United States was in no way an important country in international matters.
Daniel Webster
When Acheson was first joined State as Assistant Secretary for Economic Affairs, he writes the following in a section entitled "My Search for a Function"..."My official duties were summed up in the Department of State Bulletin by misleading platitudes...Both (Secretary) Hull and the President...knew me and, surely, had not asked me into the Department to perform the largely nonexistent duties defined in the Bulletin."
Dean Acheson
Nine days after an attack on the United States, this tiny clique of intellectuals [Neocons] was telling the President of the United States...that if he did not follow their war plans, he would be charged publicly with a "decisive surrender" to terrorism.
Pat Buchanan
Acheson, Dean
Aide, Charles Hamilton
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