Counter-insurgency, as you know, is a roller-coaster affair.
America is not in decline.
The central problem in Syria is that Sunni Arabs will not be willing partners against the Islamic State unless we commit to protect them and the broader Syrian population against all enemies, not just ISIS.
In counterinsurgency operations, the human terrain is the decisive terrain.
I considered our British comrades to rank with the finest men and women of any armed service in the world. And I know that my fellow American soldiers - and those of the other coalition countries under my command - valued very highly the professional expertise, capability, courage, and determination of our British partners on the battlefield.
But clearly, this is what this is about. It's about pushing the security bubble out. It's about rooting out every last guy, so that there's not even somebody who can fire a single, solitary RPG round from some little qalat out here.
We can put a stake through the heart of Islamic State as an army. We can put a stake through the heart of its leaders. You can take away its territory. But you can't put a stake through the heart of the ideas, of the ideology, that sadly, tragically, still has some attraction for some small numbers in the Islamic faith.
I think no commander ever is going to come out and say, 'I'm confident that we can do this.'
I don't comment directly on actions or statements of candidates.
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.
We will win again in Iraq; I do think that Iraq can definitely be handled. I think that it can be kept intact.
Obviously, resilience matters. I was no stranger to adversity, but it's different when it's personal. Not something I would recommend.
Central to achieving progress in Afghanistan - and to setting the conditions necessary to transition security tasks from the international community to the Afghan government - is increasing the size and capability of ANSF.
I will not ever run for political office. I can assure you.
I had the privilege of serving in uniform with British forces in Cold War Europe, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the greater Middle East.
Only Nixon could have gone to China. Anyone else would have been criticised from the Right.
Iraq's Sunnis need to be brought back into the fold. They need to feel as though they have a stake in the success of Iraq rather than a stake in its failure.
No greater privilege than I had as a soldier and then as a spymaster and to some degree now in the business world.
The art of coalition command - whether it is here in Afghanistan, whether it was in Iraq or in Bosnia or in Haiti - is to take the resources you are provided with, understand what the strengths and weaknesses are and to employ them to the best overall effect.
I've truly tried to be apolitical.
I can't for the life of me think of the link between Iraq and why a fruit vendor self-immolates in Tunisia and cracks this seemingly solid crust that turns out to be so fragile that societal unrest touches off.
We need to learn from our experiences and take responsibilities for our actions and drive on.
At least from a national security standpoint, none of the problems the U.S. and U.K. face will become easier to solve if the U.K. is out of the E.U.; on the contrary, I fear that a 'Brexit' would only make our world even more dangerous and difficult to manage.
In many... cases, of course, the Arab Spring has brought about instability rather than greater stability. And rather than bringing about government that is more representative and more responsive to the people, you're seeing, frankly, the opposite, or you're seeing all-out war.
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.
I do talk to individuals still in the business of tracking individuals in the homeland and abroad. A lot of them have felt that they were hanging on by their fingernails a bit in terms of tracking all the potential threats out there.
Like a nuclear disaster, the fallout from the meltdown of Syria threatens to be with us for decades, and the longer it is permitted to continue, the more severe the damage will be.
Committing to a particular goal publicly puts pressure on oneself. It becomes an enormous action-forcing mechanism and often helps you achieve more than you might have had you kept your goals to yourself.
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.
The idea is to go to bed every night with fewer enemies than you had in the morning.
There is no question in my mind that a 'Brexit' would deal a significant blow to the E.U.'s strength and resilience at exactly the moment when the West is under attack from multiple directions.
There were very few people who were both intercollegiate athletes and Star Men.
After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair.
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.
Folks really need to be very cautious about overanalyzing or overparsing what I've said to this reporter or that reporter.
The challenge of Mosul and Nineveh is the considerable number of ethnic groups, religious sects, tribes, and other elements that make up the province.
A certain degree of intellectual humility is a good thing.
I'm heartened that, for the first time, we're seeing some of the Internet Service Providers and the social media sites taking action against the Islamic State. That's the kind of initiative that can very, very much augment on an industrial scale what the government is trying to do.
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.
In all of our efforts, we continue to emphasize the importance of inclusivity and transparency on the part of the Afghan government and leadership, especially in linking nascent local governing institutions to the decision-making and financial resources in Kabul.
Being in combat is not unending high-five moments.
Rumors of the American demise... have been greatly exaggerated.
The bottom line is, you really have to commit to something if you're going to be successful in it.
When I was commander of Central Command, obviously we were very concerned about the developments in Yemen, the developments in Somalia and elsewhere, in Africa and so forth. But the al Qaeda senior leadership is under unprecedented pressure.
The Germans have done wonderful work. Not long ago, a German battle group battalion conducted a very impressive counterinsurgency operation in a portion of Baghlan province. I think these are the first counterinsurgency operations conducted by any German element after World War II. And they did a very impressive job.
Needless to say, innumerable challenges exist in all areas of governance, and much more needs to be done to help the Afghan government assume full responsibility for addressing the concerns of ordinary Afghan citizens.
There is not a military commander alive today who is genetically predisposed to say that he has enough ISR and assets, and particularly not in the Central Command theater.
When Western politicians propose blanket discrimination against Islam, they bolster the terrorists' propaganda.
The fact is that Iran doesn't want to see the Taliban come back any more than do most Afghan citizens.
