Jack Keane Quotes

You can't talk about defeating insurgencies in the same way that you can with a conventional army.

You know as well as I do that counterinsurgency is a very nuanced type of military operation.

An insurgency is the most difficult to fight of all military activities.

Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future.

Al-Qa'ida does not follow a traditional command structure, wear uniforms, carry its arms openly, or mass its troops at the borders of the nations it attacks. Nonetheless, it possesses the demonstrated capability to strike with little notice and cause significant civilian or military casualties.

With an insurgency, people are the prize. We can win every battle and still lose the war.

Counter insurgency is something we can’t do, can’t do well, and shouldn’t be doing.

A counter-insurgency is won by intelligence—not by bombardment.

In my view, airstrikes without an effective ground force are unlikely to make any meaningful contribution to defeating Isis.

Unconventional warfare needs to remain the heart and soul of U.S. Special Operations Command and component commands.

You've got to hae ground forces that are capable of going after them and rooting them out.

In the short run, using militias might be the quickest and easiest way to improve order on Iraq's streets and uproot the terrorists and guerrillas who routinely attack American troops and civilian targets.

Guerrilla wars, and even more so terrorist assaults, are conducted only by forces with insufficient strength to carry out a real war.

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.

Osama bin Laden, the person, more likely serves the function of a stand-in. Compare the new terrorists with partisans or conventional terrorists in Israel. These people often fight in a decentralized manner in small, autonomous units, too.

Living in this manner also gave them the opportunity to locate targets and develop methods of attack that would make the most impact on the population, infrastructure, and governments of these areas.

If we were fighting an army, the work would be comparatively easy. We are fighting a secret revolutionary organization.

The United States, acting within the constraints imposed by its traditions and public attitudes, cannot crush a revolutionary movement which is sufficiently large, dedicated, competent and well supported…. The structure of U. S. military power is ill-suited to cope with guerrilla warfare waged by a determined, resourceful, and politically astute opponent.

The insurgent can sow disorder anywhere, whereas the counterinsurgent—fighting on behalf of the government—has to maintain order everywhere.

Throughout most of our species’ long and bloody slog, warfare has primarily been carried out by bands of loosely organized, ill-disciplined, and lightly armed volunteers who distained open battle in favor of stealthy raids and ambushes: the strategies of both tribal warriors and modern guerrillas and terrorists. In fact, conventional warfare is the relatively recent invention.

What we wanted to do was have a terror campaign to terrify Arbenz particularly to terrify his troops, much as the German Stuka bombers terrified the population of Holland at the onset of World War II.

Our enemies should take note. Arial attacks, stupendous in their mass effect, surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination from within, the murder of leading men, overwhelming attacks on all weak points in the enemies defense, sudden attacks, all in the same second without regard for reserves or losses.

Maybe it's the spy novelist in me looking for a future plot, but I hope the U.S. and its allies are thinking how to operate 'unconventionally' in Iraq and Syria in ways that undermine the Islamic State.

Offensive operations and hunting down the enemy is an integral part of any counterinsurgency approach.

I think carpet bombing is an absolutely tremendous idea if the enemy accommodates you by laying himself out like a carpet in the middle of the desert without any civilians or infrastructure around him. Sadly, the Islamic State has learned that that is a losing proposition and does not accommodate us in that way.