I had the privilege of serving in uniform with British forces in Cold War Europe, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the greater Middle East.
— David Petraeus
I considered our British comrades to rank with the finest men and women of any armed service in the world. And I know that my fellow American soldiers - and those of the other coalition countries under my command - valued very highly the professional expertise, capability, courage, and determination of our British partners on the battlefield.
The Afghan people do not take kindly to conquerors.
No greater privilege than I had as a soldier and then as a spymaster and to some degree now in the business world.
The central problem in Syria is that Sunni Arabs will not be willing partners against the Islamic State unless we commit to protect them and the broader Syrian population against all enemies, not just ISIS.
The Middle East is not part of the world that plays by Las Vegas rules: What happens in the Middle East is not going to stay in the Middle East.
Iran has had a very harmful effect in a variety of ways in the region... fomenting unrest to a degree in Saudi Arabia, undoubtedly in Bahrain, and definitely in Yemen with Hamas, with Lebanese Hezbollah among other activities in locations.
The Orlando terrorist is an example of someone who was in the sights of law enforcement but never crossed the threshold from pre-criminal to criminal behavior and, thus, was not tracked adequately before this horrific act.
I think carpet bombing is an absolutely tremendous idea if the enemy accommodates you by laying himself out like a carpet in the middle of the desert without any civilians or infrastructure around him. Sadly, the Islamic State has learned that that is a losing proposition and does not accommodate us in that way.
I really started to get a sense of how, if you will, special Zarqawi was, I guess, sort of midway through 2004.
To do de-Baathification without an agreed process of reconciliation threw tens of thousands of people out of their jobs, out of their homes, out of their future, and even robbed them of their position in society.
I don't comment directly on actions or statements of candidates.
At a certain point, you have to take the rearview mirrors off the bus and focus forward, and that's what we've sought to do.
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.'
You cannot deal with an industrial-strength extremist problem just with force of arms. You have to have that political component as well.
The Pakistani Army, the Frontier Corps, the Frontier Scouts and Police have carried out quite impressive counter-insurgency operations.
We can put a stake through the heart of Islamic State as an army. We can put a stake through the heart of its leaders. You can take away its territory. But you can't put a stake through the heart of the ideas, of the ideology, that sadly, tragically, still has some attraction for some small numbers in the Islamic faith.
There is no question in my mind that a 'Brexit' would deal a significant blow to the E.U.'s strength and resilience at exactly the moment when the West is under attack from multiple directions.
We cannot kill or capture our way out of an industrial-strength insurgency.
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.
We're all outriders out there, and what we have is all these large number of tasks - that's the herd; that's all the cattle - a whole bunch of individual, hundreds if not thousands of projects at any given time ongoing that we're trying to complete. So we're trying to keep the cattle herd, keep it all just going in the right direction.
Like a nuclear disaster, the fallout from the meltdown of Syria threatens to be with us for decades, and the longer it is permitted to continue, the more severe the damage will be.
It wasn't just Shia that would go to Tehran and see the commander of the Quds Force and others and the legitimate government leaders. It was also Kurdish leaders and Sunni Arabs who would even link up with Qassim Suleimani, the commander of the Quds Force - maybe not in Tehran but in Turkey or somewhere else.
In many... cases, of course, the Arab Spring has brought about instability rather than greater stability. And rather than bringing about government that is more representative and more responsive to the people, you're seeing, frankly, the opposite, or you're seeing all-out war.
I do talk to individuals still in the business of tracking individuals in the homeland and abroad. A lot of them have felt that they were hanging on by their fingernails a bit in terms of tracking all the potential threats out there.
I've truly tried to be apolitical.
The word 'insurgency' had connotations that really sent a shiver down the spine of folks in Washington, in the United States - for good reason, because it means this is something much bigger than just a few terrorist cells.
If you're asked, you've got to serve - put aside any reservations based on campaign rhetoric... and figure out what's best for the country.
I am not going to second-guess my old battlefield comrades from Iraq and Afghanistan; each has his own reason for what he has done.
Obviously, resilience matters. I was no stranger to adversity, but it's different when it's personal. Not something I would recommend.
Rumors of the American demise... have been greatly exaggerated.
I refuse to use terms like 'optimist' or 'pessimist' and instead prefer 'realist.'
We periodically note that there are no silver bullets, there are no magic formulas, there's no single action or component of the overall... comprehensive civil-military approach.
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.
At least from a national security standpoint, none of the problems the U.S. and U.K. face will become easier to solve if the U.K. is out of the E.U.; on the contrary, I fear that a 'Brexit' would only make our world even more dangerous and difficult to manage.
In counterinsurgency operations, the human terrain is the decisive terrain.
Even before the missteps that I've had, I was never going to run for office. My family is adamantly opposed to it, and frankly, my politics don't necessarily work for the primaries of either of our parties.
You have to keep on disrupting. If you let up the pressure, then al-Qaeda senior leadership will come back.
There is nothing I can do to undo what I did. I can only say again how sorry I am to those I let down and then strive to go forward with a greater sense of humility and purpose, and with gratitude to those who stood with me during a very difficult chapter in my life.
I think it's reality that Iran is going to have influence in Iraq. All elements of Iraq accepted that.
We will win again in Iraq; I do think that Iraq can definitely be handled. I think that it can be kept intact.
The truth is that a number of us have been saying for quite some time that it was only a matter of time until someone went to a gun show, bought a military-like semi-automatic assault weapon with a large capacity magazine, and did enormous damage.
I don't vote.
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?
Only Nixon could have gone to China. Anyone else would have been criticised from the Right.
Ungoverned spaces in the Islamic world will be exploited by people who wish us ill. They will not be contained.
Being in combat is not unending high-five moments.
During the surge and in the years after the surge, Iraqi forces fought and died for their country at vastly higher numbers than did U.S. and coalition forces. We know that they can fight.
When I was commander of Central Command, obviously we were very concerned about the developments in Yemen, the developments in Somalia and elsewhere, in Africa and so forth. But the al Qaeda senior leadership is under unprecedented pressure.
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.
