On a professional side, you've got a tough problem to fix, Geoff Miller's going to do it, and he's always going to do it to very high standards, and he's always going to be on the side of right. He's always talking about 'what right looks like' - just a phrase he would always use.
— Jack Keane
Frankly, our adversaries are emboldened by the lack of American leadership in the world, and our friends and our allies, they have lost trust in us.
Putin has put Russia on a path to be a world power with global influence.
The issue with Syria, I think for many of us, has always been about Iran. This is an anchor point for them in terms of regional domination. It means a lot to them. They are all in here.
Al Qaeda has overplayed their hand. What the al Qaeda do when they go into a town or village or a neighborhood inside a major city is they get a stranglehold on the people themselves. They force the men to wear beards and the women to be properly costumed and essentially completely covered up.
One of the banners I would put up in front of any American president and new administration is 'Do not overreact to your predecessors' policies.'
Russia and China completely disagree with the international order that was established after World War II, and they're trying to take it apart right before our eyes.
Rebuilding the military is something Putin will pay attention to.
I'm a New York kid, so when I saw that plane that hit the first building, I suspected it was terrorism - blue sky day.
We must take all that territory away from ISIS.
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.
It's not that I can't be fooled, but I'm not fooled often.
What did we want out of Iraq? We wanted a country that was stable and secure, that elected its own government, that was not going to be a threat to its neighbors and also was capable of protecting and defending itself. That was our objective in Iraq.
ISIS is on the offense, with the ability to attack at will, anyplace, anytime.
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.
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.
I'm not in a position to go back into public service.
The military executes policy decisions.
When you had thugs and bullies and killers imposing their will on their own people or other people - if you don't respond to it, it just keeps coming because they're encouraged by their own success.
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.
Aircraft are always going to be something that terrorists are interested in because you bring down an airliner, you have drawn the world's attention.
To get an Army that's already fighting a war to change in stride to a total different military strategy on the ground - and to get everybody on the same page - was accomplished by the sheer force of Dave Petraeus' will.
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.
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.
Cyberespionage and cyberattack is exploding from our adversaries inside our country. We don't seem capable of stopping it.
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.
President-elect Trump wants to win them if you're going to be involved in a war. I don't think he wants to be involved in war, but when we are, he wants to win.
While conducting a conventional war in Iraq and Syria, ISIS has staged terrorist attacks on a global scale against the people from the countries who are fighting ISIS.
Fighting forces, particularly ground forces, have to operate on the basis of unit cohesion.
We should be robustly assisting the Free Syrian Army with equipment and also with training.
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.
If you're going to maintain true authorities over a subordinate organization, you have to have some control over policy formulation of that organization and also the resources that are applied to it.
In the early 2009, a campaign plan developed by Petraeus and General McChrystal to defeat the Taliban, they required a minimum force of 40,000. President Obama rejected that recommendation and provided 25 percent less. He also decided he would pull the force out in 12 to 15 months.
Senator Clinton is very knowledgeable about national security and is probably going to be strong on defense. I have no doubts whatsoever that if she were president in January '09, she would not act irresponsibly and issue orders to conduct an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, regardless of the consequences, and squander the gains that have been made.
The thing I have in common with Donald Trump is, about a dozen years ago, we got a 'Man of the Year' award in New York City, the Hotel Plaza, from the USO.
Historically, aggression unanswered has led to more aggression.
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.
By the end of 2008, clearly, the al Qaeda and Sunni insurgency had been relatively stabilized. And in the al Qaeda's mind, they were defeated. They actually said that in many of their transmissions that we were able to pick up. And the Shia militia, largely those trained by the Iranians in Basra and also in Sadr City, had been defeated.
ISIS itself, it draws its central belief system from the Koran and from the writings of the Prophet Muhammad. That is undeniable. And it's a medieval interpretation of it. It is a literal interpretation of it.
Radical Islam, it has grown into a global jihad.
If we have the intent to use the military only when needed, then that also becomes, then, therefore, a credible deterrent.
The Arab Spring, nobody's in the streets demonstrating for radical Islam; they're in the streets with a window of democracy. They want our political reform, our social justice, and our economic opportunity.
The homegrown terrorists are the most significant because any fighter returning from Syria to the United States would likely be identified and detected by our intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
The fact to the matter is, we never developed a comprehensive strategy to deal with radical Islam. And the 9/11 commission said one of the things we must do is develop a global alliance to combat it.
United States and our allied partners need to wake up. ISIS is at war with us and civilization.
The only people that have ever fought ISIS in Syria is not the regime; it is the Free Syrian Army.
Air power will not defeat ISIS. It has not been able to deny ISIS freedom of maneuver and the ability to attack at will.
Qatar has funded and helped arm ISIS. They also, as we all know, fund Hamas. That's got to stop. And we've got to use our pressure against that country to knock that stuff off.
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.
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.
