David Petraeus Quotes
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The fact is that Iran doesn't want to see the Taliban come back any more than do most Afghan citizens.
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I don't comment directly on actions or statements of candidates.
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Life is a competitive endeavor.
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I've been in a position before where a president has turned to me in the Oval Office in a difficult moment, without any pleasantries, and said, 'I'm asking you as your president and Commander in Chief to take command of the international security force in Afghanistan.' The only response can be, 'Yes, Mr. President.'
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I'm heartened that, for the first time, we're seeing some of the Internet Service Providers and the social media sites taking action against the Islamic State. That's the kind of initiative that can very, very much augment on an industrial scale what the government is trying to do.
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There were very few people who were both intercollegiate athletes and Star Men.
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Folks really need to be very cautious about overanalyzing or overparsing what I've said to this reporter or that reporter.
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You have to keep on disrupting. If you let up the pressure, then al-Qaeda senior leadership will come back.
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I think it's reality that Iran is going to have influence in Iraq. All elements of Iraq accepted that.
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There is not a military commander alive today who is genetically predisposed to say that he has enough ISR and assets, and particularly not in the Central Command theater.
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America is not in decline.
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Counter-insurgency, as you know, is a roller-coaster affair.
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Well, the oil, the oil spot, if you will, is a, is a term in counterinsurgency literature that connotes a peaceful area, secure area. So what you're trying to do is to always extend that, to push that out.
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Leading the coalition military effort during the surge in Iraq in 2007 and 2008 was the most important endeavor - and greatest challenge - of my 37 years in uniform.
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Needless to say, it was the greatest of privileges to serve with the selfless men and women - Iraqi and American and those of our coalition partners, civilian as well as military - who did the hard, dangerous work of the surge. There seldom was an easy period; each day was tough.
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In many respects, Afghanistan represents a more difficult problem set. It does not have a number of the blessings that Iraq has in terms of the oil, gas, land of two rivers, the human capital that Iraq built up over the years, the muscle memory of a strong government - albeit one that was corrupted over time.
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If you look at casualties, you find countries that had much higher loss rates per capita than the US. Denmark comes to mind, the United Kingdom, they have suffered heavy losses at various points, the Germans as well.
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But clearly, this is what this is about. It's about pushing the security bubble out. It's about rooting out every last guy, so that there's not even somebody who can fire a single, solitary RPG round from some little qalat out here.
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The bottom line is that Daesh's defeat requires not just hammering them on the battlefield but, simultaneously, revived political reconciliation with Sunnis.
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The Germans have done wonderful work. Not long ago, a German battle group battalion conducted a very impressive counterinsurgency operation in a portion of Baghlan province. I think these are the first counterinsurgency operations conducted by any German element after World War II. And they did a very impressive job.
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The process to resolve post-Islamic State issues will be difficult and intense.
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As we used to say when I was privileged to be the commander there, Nineveh province has the most diverse human terrain in all of Iraq - Sunni Arab majority to be sure, but also Shia Arabs, numerous Kurdish communities, and they are broken out into several different political parties.
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No greater privilege than I had as a soldier and then as a spymaster and to some degree now in the business world.
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In the 101st Airborne Division headquarters in Mosul, we had a sign on the wall. It was a question that we would ask ourselves before every new operation or policy initiative. It asked: Will this policy or operation take more bad guys off the streets than it creates by its conduct?