John McCain Quotes

According to the international organization for migration, more than 1 million migrants have arrived in Europe this year, the most since World War II. Half of them were Syrian.

Back in August 2013, when Obama entertained the White House press corps in the Rose Garden to explain that he wasn't quite as eager to upbraid Bashar Assad as he might have inadvertently led them earlier to believe, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees counted about two million Syrians in its refugee statistics.

Why are all these refugees rushing to the beauty and strength of Europe and to the United States and not rushing to their own capitals or the capitals of the Muslim world? We ought to be pushing back. We ought to be putting people back on these boats and putting them back into the places where they came from and telling these leaders in the Arab world, "You have a responsibility as well."

In 2013 we had never faced a crisis like the Syrian refugee crisis now. Up until that point, a refugee meant someone fleeing oppression, fleeing Communism like it is in my community.

Migrants all over the world are pushed and pulled across borders by hunger, terror and climate change. It happened to my own family.

As the crisis in Syria grows and the humanitarian tragedy becomes more clear, I appreciated Prime Minister Netanyahu's perspective on the changes and volatility in the region.

To destroy the Islamic State, you have to fix Syria. You have to look at the reasons that created the Islamic State. This is a huge task.

What the United States needs to do at this point is reaffirm our commitment that Assad must go and that Iran and Russia cannot be granted a sphere of influence in Syria, and that we will not sit down at the negotiating table to help broker Assad's victory in this fight.

We don't see a peaceful Syria with Assad in there.

In Syria, while secretary of state, Clinton watched as United Nations resolution after U.N. resolution failed. She accomplished nothing except to repeat the refrain, 'Assad must go.'

Every chance at destabilizing [Bashar] Assad... the bombing campaign causes a flood of refugees into Jordan, there's already half a million in Jordan. I think a bombing campaign - I think it's hard to argue that a U.S. bombing campaign is going to cause less refugees. And I think it causes more refugees and more of a humanitarian disaster. I think it causes, or allows, the risk of Israel being attacked with a gas attack to go up, if we attack Assad. So there's all kinds of bad things.

I'll absolutely do safe zones in Syria for the people. I think that Europe has made a tremendous mistake by allowing these millions of people to go into Germany and various other countries. And all you have to do is take a look. It's a disaster what's happening over there.

Yes, and Syrians. There is a horrible crisis there and the United States has admitted virtually none of the refugees.

Hillary Clinton called President Assad a "reformer". She called Assad a "different kind of leader". There's now 400,000 now dead... think about that.

Angela [Merkel] and I also agreed the need for a comprehensive and humane response to the devastating humanitarian crisis in Syria and for the influx of migrants and refugees from around the world. We need to build on the progress achieved at the U.N. Refugee Summit, which yielded new commitments from some 50 nations and organizations.

We have a human rights interest. Then there is the immigration problem. The human-rights violations have caused people to take to boats and flood not only the United States, but other countries in the region, creating great instability.

The situation in Syria is quite different from Libya.

A majority of the Syrian people believe in the regime and support Bashar al-Assad.

By ending the Hussein regime, the United States has taken away yet another incubator of terrorism.

The United States should propose partition in Syria. Assad can keep what he controls, and the rebels can form local governments and establish a new entity.

Syrian refugees fleeing to Europe do not go through anything like the rigorous process experienced by those who are coming to the States, and the volume of Syrians fleeing to Europe is orders of magnitude larger than it is to the United States.

The regime of Bashar al-Assad will inevitably go down. And its collapse will be loud not only in Syria but across the Arab world.

Assad has to go. I mean, the way that ISIS can recruit, and the rebels that are in the north, and all the chaos that's happening through a lot of Syria circles around a lot of people that do not like Assad.

Iran has basically propped up Assad, who has waged an absolute war of horror against the Syrian people. And he has done anything he could to stay in power with the full support of the Iranians and including Iranian troops and Hezbollah from Lebanon, which are an Iranian proxy.

It's difficult to see how Syria can have any long-term future with Assad there as president. Many people would never return to that country if that were the case.