Cowards and SOBs
Cowards and SOBs
THE “American official” President Benigno Aquino III quoted in his speech at the University of Fordham in New York as complaining that “the problem with the Philippines is that it has 40 million cowards and one SOB (son of a bitch) ” was most probably the outspoken US Senator J. William Fulbright, who chaired the US Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee from 1959 to 1974.
A member of the Democratic Party, Fulbright was critical of US foreign policy, whether as expressed in the invasion of Cuba (1959) during the Kennedy administration, the US presence in the Philippines (in one US Senate hearing, he described US military bases in the Philippines as simply in furtherance of US, rather than Philippine, interests), or the US war in Vietnam (1960-1975). He described the latter as an indication of “the arrogance of power,” or “the tendency of great nations to equate power with virtue.”
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