YouSaid · the spoken record

Dennis Ross

lines on the record: 79
first: 2019-11-25
most recent: 2019-11-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, what's interesting that, you know, I don't need to tell you, every administration has a kind of sociology in George H.W. Bush's case. He hated the infighting in the Reagan administration. And he made it very clear that when he was bringing people in, he wanted debates, but when the decision was made, it stopped. Leaking wasn't going to be tolerated, and if people, you know, I recall Baker saying to us, his small inner core, because that's the way he worked, he said, look, you do leaking, you engage in kind of backbiting against the other parts of the administration, you're gone. It doesn't matter how valuable I think you are, you're gone. And we developed, it's not only that the way he worked with Scowcroft and Cheney, who was on the Secretary of Defense.”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's not hard to explain that it's in our interest to prevent vacuums from forming internationally. We can't do it on our own. We need partners to do it. They have to share the burden. There's no question. It can't be only us. But if we're not prepared to play any role, then we won't have the partners. And if we're prepared, if we do what President Trump did, which is betray those who actually did the fighting and dying against ISIS, then when are you going to have others who are going to say, gee, I'm prepared to sign up with the US, I can count on them. There's a saying going around right now. Friend of an Arab friend of mine told me in the Middle East right now, if the US says it has you covered, it means you're naked.”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a reason for us to be there because if we're not there, sooner or later we're going to find it visits us. We saw what happened in Syria where you had a million refugees transform Europe, helped to give rise to populist xenophobic right-wing. Forces that affects us, a world where values don't matter, is a world where we're going to be confronting those who will, as I said, they will threaten us more directly”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, I understand the appeal, and part of the problem, and this is Democrats have a responsibility to explain policy in a way that is understandable and repeatable. The first answer to that is, why care about it? Because 9-11 didn't just emerge out of the ether. The ideology that you end up having to fight over there is an ideology that doesn't accept our existence. Our existence is a threat to them, therefore they have to carry the fight to us. So if you don't want to be having that fought here, then you have to find a way to both discredit that ideology. We can't discredit it. You need other Muslims to discredit it. You also have to have local actors who are prepared to take them on. Because again, when we put large numbers of boots on the ground, we become an occupier. When we become an occupier, that feeds the very ideology we have to fight.”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But the fact is, the Las Vegas rules don't apply there. So sooner or later what takes place there is going to visit us anyway. Or sooner or later, as you see what's serious. So you know what the present.”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and we lost six. It's terrible to lose six. But you look at what the alternatives were. This was actually a model for the future. You know, if you don't want to be the world's policeman, and we can't and shouldn't be, you don't want these vacuums to form, well, you need allies on the one hand, and you need local partners on the other. If you berate your allies, you're not going to have them. And if you betray your local partners, you're not going to have them. This is a prescription for us having a world that is dramatically less stable that, as I said, sooner or later pulls us back in in situations that are dramatically worse. To be fair, I think, you know, look, there's a wariness, there's a wariness for understandable reasons, especially when it comes to the Middle East, in the greater Middle East, counting Afghanistan. We've been on the ground losing people since 2001. I get it.”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. You think about, okay, you want to prevent vacuums. You don't want to be the only one to do it. You need local partners to do that. The local partners have to be credible. We actually find a partner who's credible because they'll fight for themselves and all they require from us is material support, some logistics support, some air cover at times. But they do the fighting. They defeated ISIS by doing the one thing you had to do. You couldn't defeat them from the air. You had to root them out on the ground. They did it. They took over 11,000 dead.”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One thing that you cannot do, and it relates to today, when the US withdraws, it creates a vacuum. Vacuums are always filled by the worst forces, and the Middle East for sure the worst forces, but even internationally. When we're not a player, then others will be, and the others who come in tend to be those who are hostile to our interests, hostile to our values. Sooner or later, they will do things that pose threats to us. And the problem is that when we then have to deal with those threats, our options are fewer and the cost is higher.”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I know, I mean, he wanted to be out of there. In the end, he got his way because we withdrew. Of eighty four. And I have to say right around this time I got an academic offer at Berkeley and I decided getting caught between the two of them was not one of the most desirable places to be. Colin Powell was Weinberg's military assistant at the time and he calls me up the day after I'm pulled off the trip and he says to me, Dennis, there are two elephants that are fighting and you're an ant. I suggest you get out of the way Yeah, I took his advice.”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We lost 241 Marines in the bombing. Although Weinberger wanted the Marines to hunker down and didn't want them to do anything there, and the irony of having them hunker down is they didn't even do a whole lot on their own self-defense.”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have to do in terms of affecting the elements within Lebanon. And so Rumsfeld says, well, I need you to come with me on this trip. And Freddie Clay, who was the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy at that point, tells Weinberger on the way back from the White House when Weinberger is sort of grousing about who Rumsfeld is and what he wants to do. He says, oh, but we're going to send one of our people with him. And he says, oh, who? He tells them it's me. He, of course, has no clue who I am. And he says, why would we do that? And so this is at a time when you didn't have cell phones. I have to go out to the airport to see Rumshole because I can't get a hold of him to tell him I can't go with him. And he goes. Oh, so you've got.”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Father of Bashar al-Assad. Bashar al-Assad. And so Weinberger wants no part of it. He wants to get out. And Schultz, Rumsfeld, and McFarlane are saying the only way you're going to change the balance of forces there and get us out to back off and allow us to actually pursue something that had been negotiated by Schultz. Schultz negotiated something called the May 17 agreement, which would have provided for Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon, but also Syria had to withdraw from Lebanon. And Assad was resisting that and putting pressure on our forces and putting pressure on Amin Jamaiel, who was the president of Lebanon at that time. And so they wanted to counteract his pressure by putting pressure on him, and Weinberger was against it. I'm sort of doing analytical work I'm doing. I'm saying, all right, here's what your choices are, here's what the forces are, here's how you might be able to affect Assad, here's what you're going to do.”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The key difference was that Rumsfeld and Schultz and McFarlane, who was a national security advisor, all felt that there had to be a coercive element to what we were doing vis- ⁇-vis Assad, because Assad was helping to promote terrorism in Lebanon and against our forces. At the time”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. And so he asked me to go with him. Now, of course, when they looked at my political background, no way were they going to give me political clearance. So I ended up going over on a rotational arrangement where you can, I could be detailed by the Defense Department to the State Department at the request. So I went over as a detailee, and I was there for a year and a half. And then I went back to the Pentagon. And I got caught up in what was really the Lebanon conflict, and people don't tend to recall. Donald Rumsfeld was the Middle East envoy in the Reagan administration at that time. I was asked to provide basically analytical work, support for him. At one point, he wanted me to travel with him to Lebanon and to Syria. But he was in a terrible confrontation with Weinberger, who was dead set against SPI.”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's interesting. I was a civil servant at the time because I went into the defense department during the Carter administration. I see. But interestingly enough, people don't know this, but Paul Wolfwitz was a deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Carter administration from the summer of 77 until the summer of 1980. And he happened to be my boss. So when he goes to Alexander Haig makes him his first appointment as head of the policy planning staff in the State Department, which”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. Someone who had an unusual feel for that region, a first rate person, not just a first rate academic. And so I had a Middle Eastern focus, but I ended up writing a doctoral dissertation on Soviet decision-making, partly because this is often the case I was offered a research assistance job for a project that was a DoD funded project on Soviet decision making.”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Study in Soviet studies, but with a heavy Middle Eastern bend. I mean, I was Malcolm Kerr was the dean of the American Airbus. I was his teaching assistant for three years. People may know Malcolm Kerr's name only today because he's Steve Kerrs. He was Steve Kerr's father, assassinated in the”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But so after the McGovern campaign, I basically took off two years from school to work in the McGovern campaign. And after that experience, I said, you know, rather than focusing politically, maybe I'll develop my policy expertise. And so that's when I”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, you remember the Kerner Commission report comes out the next year. Imagine if Bobby Kennedy had been president, given his attitude on race relations and what needed to be done, on what needed to be done with inner cities. We saw it happen when”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then suddenly we got word that there had been a shooting. We were asked to leave the hotel. I was standing actually near an exit and I walked out. And he was in a gurney, they wheeled him out in front of me. I was right by the ambulance. Oh, my. So it's one of these images that is inelibly fixed in my mind forever.”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He looked That's what we've felt like okay. This was, he was going to become, we felt he'd become president, not just get the nomination, but he'd win.”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were packed. There were two ballrooms on separate floors that we were packed into, and we were waiting a long time, and we were, first of all, we were unbelievably happy because he had won.”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bobby Kennedy. He was my first serious campaign. I did a lot of canvassing. I was at the ambassador tonight. He was killed.”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, and I had the ability to jump at that time. And I could shoot. But anyway, so I didn't have much of a Jewish identity growing up. I sort of acquired it more when I was in college, which was at a time when you had, I was an undergraduate from 66 to 70 and then a graduate student from 72 to 77. This was a kind of awakening at time for all sorts of different groups. And authority was being challenged, but people were also asserting their identity, and it became more important to me as a result as well.”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pilgrims Oh, completely. Well, look, my mother got divorced when I was a year old. She got remarried when I was almost four. My stepfather was someone who was Catholic but wasn't observant and didn't really care that my mother had a Jewish identity. I wasn't really educated. I ended up going to Sunday school because they wanted me to play on the basketball team. And so I didn't, I really developed”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of course, it was a natural place to go. She was about four feet nine inches tall. During the Vietnam War, she was out like in all the demonstrations. She had a real, I'll just say that her political views were quite sharp. I remember she gave me a magazine called The Minority of One, and I remember doing a report on it in my civics class in high school. And after I did it, I was called down to the principal's office to ask where I got this because it was basically a Trotskyite paper. So I understood that my grandmother had unusual kinds of political instincts.”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, my mother, my mother's parents came from the Ukraine and from Minsk. Her father came from Minsk. Her mother came from the Ukraine. Her mother was a real revolutionary, in fact, was sort of forced to leave by her grandfather, who was convinced that she was going to get them all into trouble. So she came over to the States and she never quite got over that.”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, well, that's probably where you can still find them. And I actually trace the change in Wren County to the Vietnam War. That's when you had a lot of professionals from San Francisco move out to Marin County. The Vietnam War produced another mother for peace that actually originated in Marin County. Although I have to say, I actually date the change in Mren County too. We lived down in a place called the Belvedere Lagoon. And in front of our house, two, in 1966, two twin Porsches pulled up and two guys got out of them in twin jogging suits. And I turned to my brother and I said, this looks to me like a profound change is taking place. I'm not quite sure why or what or what's driving it, but something profound is happening in front of our eyes. And so I date it largely from them.”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did. I grew up born in San Francisco, grew up in Wren County. And at that time, interestingly enough, when I was in Rin County as a kid, it was a liberal Republican county, which seems like an oxymoron in and of itself. Yes, I know.”
2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source