Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" President Obama and a small team of senior national security officials were in the unusual position of acting as al-Awlaki's jury, judges, and de facto executioners. "

Related Quotes:

" So Pakistan is a country that I'm very fond of and have spent a lot of time, but it is a country where conspiracy theories have a life of their own. "

Peter L. Bergen

Time

Country

Own

" 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. "

" In February I secured permission to enter Osama bin Laden's compound in the northern Pakistani city of Abbottabad, where he was killed and where he had lived for the last half-decade of his life; the first, and only, journalist to do so. "

" Occasionally, Donald Trump says something that is politically incorrect but which also happens to be true. "

" 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. "

" For Islamist terrorist groups such as ISIS, the holy month of Ramadan - a time of fasting and prayer for the vast majority of Muslims - is seen as a particularly auspicious time to launch terrorist attacks. "

" 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. "

" Apostasy is a grave crime in Islam and punishable by death in the eyes of members of al Qaeda. "

" When Congress passed the Authorization for the Use of Military Force immediately after the 9/11 attacks, no one could have imagined this authorization would continue to be the basis for American wars that persist a decade and a half later. "

" A key flaw of the Obama administration's approach to Afghanistan has been constantly announcing proposed withdrawal dates for U.S. forces, which has enabled the Taliban to believe they can simply wait out the clock. "

" Bin Laden comes out of a business background - he studied public administration and economics at university, and he worked for his family company, which was obviously a rather successful enterprise. "

" Information-sharing between Western governments about the identities of those who have traveled to Syria and have received militant training is the key to preventing more incidents such as the one at the Jewish Museum in Brussels. "

Peter L. Bergen

Key

Museum

" Because Scotland and Northern Ireland want to remain part of the E.U., there is the quite real possibility that Scotland and even Northern Ireland might now choose to go their own way on membership within the E.U. and the 'United Kingdom' would suddenly effectively be only England and Wales. "

" Trump has claimed he knows more about ISIS than America's leading generals. Clearly, this is also total nonsense; he doesn't seem to have done the slightest thing to educate himself about ISIS. "

Peter L. Bergen

Done

America

" There is no hint that Trump wishes to engage in or to foment violence against the enemies, such as immigrants, he has identified as undermining the American way of life. "

" The E.U. is the latest of a series of multinational organizations set up after World War II to ensure that there would never again be a pan-European war and to create the conditions for a new European prosperity after the destruction wrought by the war against the Nazis. The E.U. has admirably succeeded at both. "

" Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the two brothers who carried out the marathon bombing, was a non-practicing Muslim who only became an Islamist militant once his dreams of becoming an Olympic boxer faded. At the time of the attack, he was unemployed. "

" 'Zero Dark Thirty' is a great piece of filmmaking and does a valuable public service by raising difficult questions most Hollywood movies shy away from, but as of this writing, it seems that one of its central themes - that torture was instrumental to tracking down bin Laden - is not supported by the facts. "

" The reality is that Trump's focus on immigrants is to misconceive of the terrorist problem that exists in the United States. "

" 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. "

" ISIS may be a perversion of Islam, but Islamic it is, just as Christian beliefs about the sanctity of the unborn child explain why some Christian fundamentalists attack abortion clinics and doctors. "

" American jihadists are generally motivated by a mix of factors, including dislike of U.S. foreign policy in the Muslim world. "

" Syria is attracting a lot more Westerners than the Iraq War ever did because it's the perfect Sunni jihad. "

" At one point people in al Qaeda were actually drawing monthly paychecks when they were based in Sudan. "

" Keeping a relatively small, predominantly U.S. Special Forces presence in Afghanistan to continue to train the Afghan army past December 2016 is a wise policy that would benefit both Afghans and Americans. "

" The Bush administration's approach to the war on terror collided badly with another of its doctrines, spreading democracy in the Middle East as a panacea to reduce radicalism. "

" 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

" 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. "

" If the party of Lincoln wishes to become the party of intolerance, selecting Trump to be its presidential candidate is a good way forward. "

" What did U.S. officials have to lose by saying that bin Laden was being protected by the Pakistanis, if it were true? "