Jack Keane Quotes
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Economically, ISIS is making money every day on the black market with their oil fields. But they are also putting money in banks. We know where those banks are. We should go after the banks and the facilitators using them.
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In 2012, General Dempsey, General Petraeus directed the CIA, Secretary Panetta and Secretary Clinton recommended to the president to robustly arm and train the Syrian moderates. He says no. In 2013, conduct a military strike, same national security team, against the Assad regime because he violated the chemical red line. He says no.
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I have decorated soldiers for heroism before, and it was always such an honor to do it.
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Here's the problem the Free Syrian Army has. They really want to topple the regime in Damascus, and this is where most of the fight takes place, between Aleppo and Damascus for the Free Syrian Army.
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The Pentagon is a series of wedges. So you have - the outer wedge has windows on the outside, and then inside of that, it has windows with an alleyway; then there's another wedge with windows outside, windows inside. And we call them the E Ring, the D Ring, the C Ring.
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I remember speaking to a sheik who came back into the political system in late 2008, laid down his arms. His troops became part of the Sons of Iraq, the so-called Sunni Awakening.
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United States and our allied partners need to wake up. ISIS is at war with us and civilization.
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Very unusual in an insurgency to have absolutely no political agenda other than to return to power. Most insurgents have a political side to them.
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In 2011, General Alston, four-star commander in Iraq, recommended to the President, a force level of over 20,000. The President rejected it and pulled out all the forces with what is now known as a disastrous consequence in Syria.
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Rebuilding the military is something Putin will pay attention to.
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This radical Islam is a religious-based ideology. And you actually have to, when you deal with the ideology, you have to attack it on that basis.
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Historically, aggression unanswered has led to more aggression.
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Everybody wants to talk about sectarian conflicts of the war in Iraq, but the fact of the matter is, Sunnis have lived with Shias in harmony more in the confines of Iraq, in that land, than they have been in conflict. That's an historical fact.
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Russia, their number one client in the Middle East is Syria; that is their foothold in the Middle East. They want to have influence there.
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I have lots of concerns at working with Russia going against ISIS until we have agreements in terms of what Russia's behavior is going to be.
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Sometimes, our expectations of being all-knowing is somewhat unrealistic. At the end of the day, there are people out there who mean harm to us, are thinking about doing harm to us and motivated to do it, and we don't know what that is.
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If Assad continues to conduct strikes against the Free Syrian Army at will, it would be very difficult for them to have any success against ISIS.
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Air power will not defeat ISIS. It has not been able to deny ISIS freedom of maneuver and the ability to attack at will.
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We have a sufficient political class, and the military doesn't have to get involved in high national office. The days of doing that, post-Civil War and post-World War II, are gone.
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We must take all that territory away from ISIS.
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The success of ISIS is largely tied to the safe haven it has in Syria.
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I watched the Bush administration overreact to the Clinton administration, who believed they did too much nation building, sustaining other countries, and that's why we never put the commitment on Afghanistan and Iraq that should have been in there under their policy leadership.
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In Washington, D.C., in 2006, Democrats had long since given up on the war in Iraq in terms of any tangible political support for it. The new factor was the Republicans were beginning to give up as well, and they were truly challenging the strategy and the lack of success.
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There are very few fighters in the ISIS organization in Iraq and Syria coming from the United States; most of them have either come from a region of the Middle East or from Europe.