Peter Bergen Quotes
-
The only lethal terrorist to immigrate to the United States as an adult and conduct an attack shortly after arriving is Tashfeen Malik, who was born in Pakistan.
-
The Turkish government will never tolerate the creation of a Kurdish state.
-
Security services, from Afghanistan to the United States, should be alert throughout the Ramadan period, but especially on the 27th day of the holy month.
-
Assad owes his continuation in power to the intervention of Russia in 2015 to prop up his regime.
-
Incompetence is a better explanation than conspiracy in most human activity.
-
A little exposure to a city like Sulaimani will help Trump understand that the Middle East is a much more complex place than he seems to believe. Perhaps Trump could even give a speech at the American University in Sulaimani, just as President Obama did at Cairo University early in his first term.
-
A decade and a half ago, the U.S. Air Force dropped massive 15,000-pound 'Daisy Cutter' bombs on the Tora Bora complex where Osama bin Laden was hiding in December 2001.
-
Al-Qaeda, which means 'the base' in English, lost its base and training camps in Afghanistan, while its leaders were on the run, captured, or dead. One year after the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda was still on life support.
-
Will there be a political backlash against British Prime Minister Theresa May, whose ruling Conservative Party is traditionally seen as 'stronger' on terrorism than its main rival, the Labour Party?
-
In 1999, NATO did impose a no-fly zone in Kosovo without seeking a U.N. resolution to carry out air strikes on Serbian forces.
-
It is in American and Afghan interests for the U.S. to stay in Afghanistan so it doesn't turn into Iraq circa 2014, with the Taliban controlling much of the country while hosting a strong presence of ISIS and al-Qaeda as well as every other jihadist group of note.
-
When it comes to the greater Middle East, McMaster brings to the table his own deep knowledge of Iraq and Afghanistan, countries where he served for many years.
-
Ground operations are inherently very risky in Yemen. The two previous JSOC raids in Yemen were both in 2014.
-
My quest to meet Osama bin Laden began in North London early in 1997. In the Dollis Hill section, I contacted Khaled al-Fauwaz, the spokesman for a Saudi opposition group, the Advice and Reformation Committee, which bin Laden had founded.
-
ISIS despises the Russian government for its support of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and so it's no surprise that ISIS began targeting Russia in 2015, around the same time that Russia first intervened in the Syrian civil war.
-
Contrary to what the Americans frequently reiterated, al-Qaeda did not have any relationship with Saddam Hussein or his regime.
-
Bin Laden was intelligent, well-informed, and low key. The people around him treated him with great deference, calling him 'sheikh,' a term of respect.
-
Afghanistan's winters in the north are legendarily harsh, and southern Afghanistan, by contrast, is bleak desert. These difficulties are compounded by the fact that Afghanistan is one of the world's most heavily mined countries.
-
Abedi appears to be one of the many thousands of Western Muslims who have embraced militant Islam, often as a way of trying to resolve the tension between their split identities.
-
Mateen pledged allegiance to ISIS during his attack, the worst terror attack on American soil since 9/11.
-
Hydrogen peroxide-based bombs were used in the London bombings in 2005; in al Qaeda's foiled plot to attack subways in New York City in 2009 and also in the ISIS-directed Paris attacks in 2015 and the ISIS-directed attacks in Brussels a year later.
-
In one notorious episode in 2002, in the holy city of Mecca, the religious police prevented girls from fleeing a school that was on fire because they were not properly dressed.
-
Using vehicles as weapons is a tactic that has often used by Palestinian terrorists to target Israelis, but in 2014, an ISIS spokesman had encouraged such vehicular attacks in the West, saying of ISIS' enemies, 'Run him over with your car.'
-
The American incarceration of Sheikh Rahman was a hot-button issue for al Qaeda for many years.