Cheryl Benard Quotes
It's a different world out there…. humanitarians will have to operate under the cover of arms—or not at all.
She was commenting on the problems of providing humanitarian assistance in a terrorist war. Terrorists have not had the traditional respect for the persons of humanitarian workers who traditionally preferred not to be associated with solders or armed staff.
Cheryl Benard, Novelist & Wife of Ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, "Afghanistan Without Doctors," The Wall Street Journal, August 12, 2004
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
After the World War I armistice there were 7,000 American troops remaining in Russian Siberia to the chagrin of the Secretary of War who wanted them removed. One reason given for their presence was to "protect our relief efforts there:"
In the latter years of the 20th century and into the 21st, United Nations peacekeepers had a woeful record of refusing to fight to defend the lives of captured civilians. From the Balkans to Africa thousands of civilians were massacred while United Nations peacekeepers did not interfere. Many physicians whose instincts were against violence were so frustrated by the cowardice and ineptness of UN peacekeepers that armed civilian resistance to armies was preferable.
The "trouble" was the terrorist attacks to gain an independent Pakistan that the Punjab Muslims were perpetrating against the Sikhs and the Hindus and the retaliations. At first organized in the cities they had become spontaneous and spread to the countryside. It turned out to be impossible for Governor Jenkins and the limited British troops and police to stop the violence in most places. By the end of the Partition of India hundreds of thousands of Punjabis had been killed.
Scowcroft and Colin Powell had been key military and security advisors to President George W. Bush’s father when he was President. The younger Bush had no foreign policy or military experience, and he and his party assured the public that with men like Scowcroft and Powell advising him, all would be well. However, when Bush thought of invading Iraq, Scowcroft and Powell strongly advised him against it, but the younger Bush ignored the advice of these men who had served the nation so well under his father. Scowcroft’s warning could not have been more accurate.
Cheryl Benard (born in 1953) is an academic scholar, writer, political scientist and novelist. She is the wife of Zalmay Khalilzad, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Afghanistan and Iraq. She and Khalilzad have two sons, Alexander Benard and Maximilian Benard.
