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" The bottom line is that Daesh's defeat requires not just hammering them on the battlefield but, simultaneously, revived political reconciliation with Sunnis. "
David Petraeus
Political
Line
Defeat
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" 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. "
David Petraeus
Say
Broken
Different
" The tragedy is that political leaders failed so badly at delivering what Iraqis clearly wanted - and for that, a great deal of responsibility lies with Prime Minister Maliki. "
David Petraeus
Political
Great
Responsibility
" There aren't always a hell of a lot of absolutely right answers out there. "
David Petraeus
Answers
Right
Out
" 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. "
David Petraeus
Office
Family
Work
" There is no question that the Islamic State will be defeated in Mosul; the real question is what comes afterward. Can the post-Islamic State effort resolve the squabbling likely to arise over numerous issues and bring lasting stability to one of Iraq's most diverse and challenging provinces? Failure to do so could lead to ISIS 3.0. "
David Petraeus
Failure
Question
Effort
" Every civilian's death diminishes us, collectively. "
David Petraeus
Every
Death
Collectively
" Leadership is an individual sport, one that has to be fine-tuned to each of the people that reports to you. Leaders also need to provide the direction, energy, encouragement and inspiration for each person who reports directly to the leader as well as for the overall organization. "
David Petraeus
Leadership
You
People
" 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? "
David Petraeus
Question
Bad
Division
" Reconciliation is what takes place, of course, at higher levels. President Karzai has been very clear about the red lines for reconciliation, accept the constitution, lay down their weapons, cut their ties with al Qaeda and essentially become productive or at least participating members of society in that regard. "
David Petraeus
Down
Society
Place
" You have to keep on disrupting. If you let up the pressure, then al-Qaeda senior leadership will come back. "
David Petraeus
You
Will
Leadership
" The president and I sat down in the Oval Office, and he expressed very clearly that what he wants from me is my best professional military advice. "
David Petraeus
He
Me
Professional
" The challenge of Mosul and Nineveh is the considerable number of ethnic groups, religious sects, tribes, and other elements that make up the province. "
David Petraeus
Ethnic
Up
Religious
" 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. "
David Petraeus
Country
You
Got
" Needless to say, it was the greatest of privileges to serve with the selfless men and women - Iraqi and American and those of our coalition partners, civilian as well as military - who did the hard, dangerous work of the surge. There seldom was an easy period; each day was tough. "
David Petraeus
Work
Women
Tough
" I refuse to use terms like 'optimist' or 'pessimist' and instead prefer 'realist.' "
David Petraeus
Like
Use
Realist
" We cannot kill or capture our way out of an industrial-strength insurgency. "
David Petraeus
Out
Way
Our
" As you will recall, soon after the 9/11 attacks, an international coalition led by the United States conducted an impressive campaign to defeat the Taliban, al Qaeda, and other associated extremist groups in Afghanistan. "
David Petraeus
Impressive
Campaign
Defeat
" Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters - all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing. "
David Petraeus
Connected
Will
Tiny
" People often ask, why aren't you reading about what it is you're working on right now? And the truth is, you only get three pages a night before your eyelids close. "
David Petraeus
Truth
People
Reading
" Life is a competitive endeavor. "
David Petraeus
Life
Competitive
Endeavor
" I don't vote. "
David Petraeus
Vote
" The proximate cause of Iraq's unraveling was the increasing authoritarian, sectarian, and corrupt conduct of the Iraqi government and its leader after the departure of the last U.S. combat forces in 2011. "
David Petraeus
Cause
Last
Government
" America is not in decline. "
David Petraeus
Decline
America
" You cannot deal with an industrial-strength extremist problem just with force of arms. You have to have that political component as well. "
David Petraeus
Well
Problem
Political
" 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. "
David Petraeus
You
Point
Mirrors
" Well, the oil, the oil spot, if you will, is a, is a term in counterinsurgency literature that connotes a peaceful area, secure area. So what you're trying to do is to always extend that, to push that out. "
David Petraeus
Literature
Peaceful
Push
" We all have to strive to learn what motivates us, learn from our experiences, and what feels right and what feels wrong. There's a strong component over the years to having formal processes that help to identify lessons that need to be learned, and actions that need to be taken. In other words, how do you find the big idea? "
David Petraeus
You
Words
Strong
" If you look at casualties, you find countries that had much higher loss rates per capita than the US. Denmark comes to mind, the United Kingdom, they have suffered heavy losses at various points, the Germans as well. "
David Petraeus
You
Mind
Find
" Setting aside moral considerations, those who flirt with hate speech against Muslims should realize they are playing directly into the hands of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. The terrorists' explicit hope has been to try to provoke a clash of civilizations - telling Muslims that the United States is at war with them and their religion. "
David Petraeus
Speech
Hands
War
" Ungoverned spaces in the Islamic world will be exploited by people who wish us ill. They will not be contained. "
David Petraeus
People
Us
Wish