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" At one point people in al Qaeda were actually drawing monthly paychecks when they were based in Sudan. "
Peter L. Bergen
Sudan
Drawing
Actually
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" During the campaign, Trump in many ways repudiated President Obama's national security and foreign policy approach on issues like the Iran nuclear deal and immigration. So there's a real question of continuity or disruption with Trump, which wouldn't have existed if Clinton was president-elect. "
Peter L. Bergen
Real
Immigration
Question
" Trump displays many of the traits of a proto-fascist, and he is also part of a wave of right-wing nationalist movements that is sweeping the West. He can also be positioned in the long, American right-wing tradition of fearing 'the Other,' whether they are Catholics or Jews or, now, Muslims. "
Peter L. Bergen
Long
Tradition
American
" Mattis has been sharply critical of President Barack Obama's policies on Iran and Obama's capping of troop numbers and campaign end-dates in theaters of war such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Mattis also appears to be a skeptic of the Obama-era policy of putting women into combat roles. "
Peter L. Bergen
Numbers
Women
President
" In short, the hunt for bin Laden could not have been accomplished without every form of American intelligence-gathering. "
Peter L. Bergen
American
Without
Short
" The image we have of bin Laden in his final years in Abbottabad is of an aging man with a graying beard watching old footage of himself; just another suburban dad flipping though the channels with his remote. "
Peter L. Bergen
Old
Watching
Man
" The rise of ISIS starts with a Jordanian thug named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who founded ISIS' parent organization, al Qaeda, in Iraq. What gave Zarqawi the opportunity to create al Qaeda in Iraq? It was, of course, George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003. "
Peter L. Bergen
Decision
Organization
Who
" Today, we are not likely to need to organize local militias for our defense now we have something called the Pentagon. "
Peter L. Bergen
Today
Now
Need
" What made al-Awlaki so influential is that, unlike a number of leaders of al Qaeda such as Osama bin Laden, he was a cleric, so he could present himself as a leading religious figure. Second, because al-Awlaki had spent much of his adult life in the States, he communicated with his followers in colloquial, accessible American English. "
Peter L. Bergen
Life
Because
Present
" In picking Gen. Jim Mattis for Defense secretary, President-elect Donald Trump has said that he found his 'Gen. George Patton.' Yet that label may not really capture what makes Mattis a distinctive choice. "
Peter L. Bergen
Capture
Choice
Donald Trump
" Certain Gulf Arabs support proxy jihadist Sunni groups such as al Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, while Iran supports Shia militant forces such as Hezbollah. "
Peter L. Bergen
Syria
Arabs
Forces
" Some might say that that while al Qaeda the organization may be basically dead, its ideology continues to thrive and to inspire 'lone wolves' to attack the United States. "
Peter L. Bergen
Organization
Inspire
Wolves
" Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad belongs to the small Alawite sect and is therefore considered a heretic by many Sunnis; al-Assad runs a secular regime, and therefore he is considered by Sunni militants to be an apostate, and he is inflicting a total war on his Sunni population. "
Peter L. Bergen
War
Dictator
He
" Rather than making loose and unsubstantiated claims that Obama and Clinton created ISIS, it would behoove Trump if he advanced some real policy ideas about how to solve the Syrian and Iraqi civil wars. Of course, to do that he would have to get beyond the inflammatory slogans and sound bites that have characterized his campaign. "
Peter L. Bergen
Real
Sound
Some
" The Obama administration has framed its defense of the controversial bulk collection of all American phone records as necessary to prevent a future 9/11. "
Peter L. Bergen
Future
Defense
Phone
" Trump has long said he favors a 'safe zone' in Syria to prevent Basher al Assad's regime from carrying out indiscriminate airstrikes against Syrian civilians and to halt the refugee flow out of Syria. "
Peter L. Bergen
Long
Flow
Against
" While the story about the hunt for bin Laden has been exhaustively reported and the key sources and witnesses are in agreement about the main points of the narrative, of course, it's still possible that we could learn new details about the story that would add to the narrative. "
Peter L. Bergen
Key
Details
Learn
" One only has to look at the debacle that has unfolded in Iraq after the withdrawal of U.S. troops at the end of 2011 to have a sneak preview of what could take place in an Afghanistan without some kind of residual American presence. "
Peter L. Bergen
End
Kind
American
" ISIS is even at war with its most natural ally, al Qaeda in Syria. "
Peter L. Bergen
Ally
Syria
Natural
" Adding to your list of enemies is never a sound strategy, yet ISIS' ferocious campaign against the Shia, Kurds, Yazidis, Christians, and Muslims who don't precisely share its views has united every ethnic and religious group in Syria and Iraq against them. "
Peter L. Bergen
Never
Group
Enemies
" ISIS' key social media-encrypted platform is Telegram, which is engineered by a Berlin-based tech company that can simply ignore the rulings of American federal judges as well as legislation passed by the U.S. Congress. "
Peter L. Bergen
Key
American
Company
" Imprisoned by its war on terror framework, the Bush administration supported Israel in a disastrous war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in the summer of 2006. "
Peter L. Bergen
War
Israel
Against
" What is tricky for those hoping to utilize such weapons is that TATP bombs are quite difficult to make because their ingredients, when combined, are highly unstable and can explode easily if mishandled. "
Peter L. Bergen
Ingredients
Difficult
Because
" The United States didn't ban Italian immigration in the 1920s because a small minority of Italians became members of the Mafia, and the country is a richer place for it. "
Peter L. Bergen
Immigration
Place
Small
" There is considerable merit to the notion of treating gun violence as a public health matter. "
Peter L. Bergen
Merit
Gun
Matter
" The Japanese scored an important victory at Pearl Harbor, but the attack pulled the United States into World War II, and four years later, Japan was in ruins, utterly defeated. "
Peter L. Bergen
Defeated
Important
War
" Trump has long been a fan of Vladimir Putin but seems to be unaware that Russia's goal in Syria is simply the maintenance of its longtime ally President Bashar al-Assad in power. Indeed, Moscow has hitherto shown little appetite to focus on ISIS. "
Peter L. Bergen
Long
Power
Focus
" The diagnosis that poverty, lack of education, or lack of opportunities have much to do with terrorism requires a fundamentally optimistic view of human nature. This diagnosis leads to the prognosis that all we need to do to solve the terrorism problem is to create societies that are less poor, better educated and have more opportunities. "
Peter L. Bergen
Nature
Human Nature
Problem
" President-elect Donald Trump has a host of national security challenges to deal with as he assumes office, from the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan to the grinding Syrian civil war to the flexing of Russian muscles under President Vladimir Putin to how to deal with ISIS as the terrorist army retreats in Iraq. "
Peter L. Bergen
Army
Challenges
Office
" I stepped into the bedroom where he was killed and looked up at the ceiling, where you could still see the patterns of blood that had spurted from bin Laden's head when the bullet fired by a U.S. Navy SEAL tore through the terrorist leader's face. "
Peter L. Bergen
Blood
You
Face
" The fact is, working stiffs with few opportunities and scant education are generally too busy getting by to engage in revolutionary projects to remake society. And history, in fact, shows us that terrorism is generally a bourgeois endeavor. "
Peter L. Bergen
History
Education
Busy