Both President Kennedy and President Reagan were roundly criticized by parts of the foreign policy establishment that felt they were being weak by engaging our adversaries. So some of it is built into a political lexicon that makes you sound tougher if you don't talk to somebody, and rather, very loudly, wield a big stick.
There is a political process which we are trying to achieve through what is called the Vienna Group. That involves the establishment of a governing council, which is to take power away from Bashar Assad, to write a constitution and to open the way for elections. It is important that Bashar leaves in the beginning, not at the end of the process. This will make the transition happen with less death and destruction.
The question is: How do we succeed in Iraq? And you don't succeed by leaving before the mission is complete, like some in this political process are suggesting.
The primary cause of disorder in ourselves is the seeking of reality promised by another... It is a most extraordinary thing that although most of us are opposed to political tyranny and dictatorship, we inwardly accept the authority, the tyranny, of another to twist our minds and our way of life.
If, as we decided in Munich, there will be a cessation of hostilities and humanitarian assistance can flow into Syria - then this will open the door for the beginning of the political transition process.
New opinions often appear first as jokes and fancies, then as blasphemies and treason, then as questions open to discussion, and finally as established truths.
I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another.
The solutions to the problems of the distraught lower strata of society are problems that can only be solved in the context of an overall political, cultural, economic development.
But the Church cannot be, in any political sense, either conservative or liberal, or revolutionary. Conservatism is too often conservation of the wrong things: liberalism a relaxation of discipline; revolution a denial of the permanent things.