Quotes About Insurgency

#1. Kennedy saw the insurgency as a anti-colonial, essentially nationalist movement, feeding on social discontent. So you don't shoot people.

Roger Hilsman

#2. Its the reality of a situation like this that when you have a large troop presence that it has the tendency to fuel the insurgency, because they can make the incorrect and unfair claim that somehow the United States is here to occupy this country, which of course is not true.

Russ Feingold

#3. [In response to the question "Do you think that you underestimated the insurgency's strength?"] I think so. I guess if I look back on it now, I don't think anybody anticipated the level of violence that we've encountered.

Dick Cheney

#4. If we want to build the Iraqis' confidence about our intentions in their country, if we want to stop adding fuel to the fire of insurgency and terrorism, we must clarify our intent.

John Conyers

#5. There was an insurgency under President Hosni Mubarak in the 1990s. Egyptian police and soldiers fought weekly battles with Islamists in the sugarcane fields and thick reeds along the Nile in rural southern villages like Minya, Sohag, Enna and Assiout.

Richard Engel

#6. But what counter-insurgency really comes down to is the protection of the capitalists back in America, their property and their privileges. U.S. national security, as preached by U.S. leaders, is the security of the capitalist class in the US, not the security of the rest of the people.

Philip Agee

#7. The war in Afghanistan is too important to be reduced to a political football. We are fighting there to protect our national security. We are confronting the Taliban-led insurgency to prevent terrorists returning to that country.

Bob Ainsworth

#8. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.

Dick Cheney

#9. There is no clear or meaningful difference between insurgency and civil war, or between national terrorism and civil war for that matter.

Anthony H. Cordesman

#10. I don't know how you defeat an insurgency unless you have some handle on the number of people you are facing.

John McCain

#11. We had won the war, but when the insurgency reared its ugly head, we lost everything we had gained.

Kenneth Eade

#12. Almost immediately, I remember right when Tikrit even fell, a few days after Baghdad fell, there was talks of insurgency, there was talks of jihad and of resisting the American occupiers, and slowly this turned into an organized movement.

Farnaz Fassihi

#13. The Syrian regime is helping the insurgency in Iraq and allowing all kinds of militants to come in and out, and go to Iraq to attack random soldiers and innocent people.

Walid Jumblatt

#14. In any insurgency there will be people who are irreconcilable and who pose a clear and present threat to the U.S. and our allies.

James G. Stavridis

#15. Now that our troops are mired in a dangerous effort to defeat the insurgency and are also trying to help rebuild the country, Americans of all political persuasions simply want the United States to succeed and our troops to be as safe as possible.

Harry Reid

#16. But the key shift in focus will be from counter-insurgency operations to more and more cooperation with Iraqi security forces and to building Iraqi security capacity.

John Abizaid

#17. Rather than bring peace and harmony, the EU will cause insurgency and violence.

Nigel Farage

#18. You can't kill your way to success in a counter insurgency effort. You have to protect the people, get the civil military balance right, train the locals, and practice effective strategic communications.

James G. Stavridis

#19. We are tangled in a very significant Islamic insurgency in Iraq.

Michael Scheuer

#20. I never call it an insurgency. I call it terrorism.

Hamid Karzai

#21. We must clean our national psyche from all manifestation of evil, be it kidnapping, militancy, insurgency, murders or assassinations.

Sunday Adelaja

#22. The most stupid mistake a counter-insurgency operation can make is alienating the population. If you alienate the population, you're finished.

Meles Zenawi

#23. I am encouraged by the news today that United States special operations personnel found, identified and killed the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the operational commander of the al-Qaeda led insurgency in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi was the public face of the insurgency.

Mike Fitzpatrick

#24. I think the central mission in Afghanistan right now is to protect the people, certainly, and that would be inclusive of everybody, and that in a, in an insurgency and a counterinsurgency, that's really the center of gravity.

Michael Mullen

#25. Our military should spare no expense to ensure the safety of our troops, particularly as they confront a hostile insurgency and roadside bombs throughout Iraq.

Christopher Dodd

#26. Our aim is always to minimise casualties and to separate a hardline Taliban from those who have been caught up in the insurgency.

Bob Ainsworth

#27. The administration needs to speak honestly with the American people. Exaggerating our progress in defeating the insurgency or in creating an Iraqi army paints a dangerous picture.

Sherrod Brown

#28. The number of attacks on the American and allied forces is at the highest level since the insurgency began despite the increase of America combat operations and the introduction of some 40 new Iraq security forces and battalions.

Ike Skelton

#29. One of the most ignored dimensions of the Iraqi insurgency are the Iraqis themselves who are regularly abducted, held for ransom and sometimes executed.

Bruce Hoffman

#30. The Government of Iraq also owes a debt to the American and coalition forces who are fighting the insurgency and helping put that country back together after decades of repression.

Ike Skelton

#31. We remember the grind of the insurgency
the roadside bombs, the sniper fire, the suicide attacks. From the 'triangle of death' to the fight for Ramadi; from Mosul in the north to Basra in the south
your will proved stronger than the terror of those who tried to break it.

Barack Obama

#32. What's happened is that an incessant, an insidious insurgency has repeatedly attacked the key infrastructure targets, reducing outputs.

Stuart Bowen

#33. With no other security forces on hand, U.S. military was left to confront, almost alone, an Iraqi insurgency and a crime rate that grew worse throughout the year, waged in part by soldiers of the disbanded army and in part by criminals who were released from prison.

John Spratt

#34. Almost all Iraqis with any previous experience in the intelligence business are Sunni Arab, increasing the risk of penetration of the new intelligence apparatus by the insurgency.

Wayne White

#35. An insurgency doesn't have to win. It just has to survive.

Mark Owen

#36. I think the behavior of the troops has been a huge factor in the rise of the insurgency and in the rise of the anti-American feelings there[in Iraq].

Yaroslav Trofimov

#37. Three years into the war, tens of thousands of American troops remain targets of a growing Iraqi insurgency.

Jan Schakowsky

#38. Iraq was already in the grip of a bloody insurgency against British rule. Churchill therefore called a conference in Cairo to hand over a certain amount of power to Arab rulers under British influence.

Simon Sebag Montefiore

#39. The presence of American troops is fueling the insurgency in Iraq, as acknowledged by General Casey and numerous other experts, and is helping terrorist recruiters build their numbers across the globe.

John Conyers

#40. We must support initiatives that provide clear, concrete measures and milestones that our troops need for defeating the insurgency, building up Iraqi security forces, and handing over Iraq to the Iraqi people.

Sherrod Brown

#41. Constructive insurgency: Is the use of legal and imaginative means of resistance to reform a system of repression. Generally through the use of a non-violent nature.

Clyde Lewis

#42. Superior might does not guarantee success, especially in a war where political considerations dominate.

Richard H. Shultz Jr.

#43. But the heart weakens without democracy, and there was no democracy within the Tigers. They antagonized their own brothers by killing them.

Samanth Subramanian

#44. The simple and terrifying reality, forbidden from discussion in America, was that despite spending $600 billion a year on the military, despite having the best fighting force the world had ever known, they were getting their asses kicked by illiterate peasants who made bombs out of manure and wood.

Michael Hastings