Tom Cotton Quotes

Our safety at home and the cause of freedom abroad is largely contingent upon our success in Iraq.

During the surge in Iraq, we were able to roll back the tide of al-Qaeda and associated insurgents because we succeeded in mobilizing Iraqis - especially Sunni Arabs - to join us in fighting against the largely Sunni extremist networks in their midst.

By the time the 2008 election arrived, we had finally won the Iraq War, or we were on the road to winning it. We won starting in the summer of 2007 going into late 2011.

I don't think we handled the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad as well as we might have. But that's now history.

We are running out of time. We need a strategy to win in Iraq or an exit strategy to leave.

The Gulf War was finished off properly. Make no mistake about it.

There should be victory in war—not management.

In the early 2009, a campaign plan developed by Petraeus and General McChrystal to defeat the Taliban, they required a minimum force of 40,000. President Obama rejected that recommendation and provided 25 percent less. He also decided he would pull the force out in 12 to 15 months.

In practice, the U.K.'s most consistent strategic objective in relation to Iraq was to reduce the level of its deployed forces.

The war in Iraq, clearly has not turned out in the way that was hoped.

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.

I was lucky enough to lead a very successful war.

Faced with the collapse of Iraq into something like Lebanon - or worse, Somalia - the Bush administration opted for a new counterinsurgency strategy. Violence was reduced because, for the first time since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Iraqis felt that there was a force capable of dominating the situation and ensuring basic order.

The power to wage war is the power to wage war successfully.

Our military is doing everything it can to equip Iraq's forces so our troops can come home as soon as possible, but we cannot leave until the job is done.

If the tanks succeed, then victory follows.

One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed - different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgement of defeat.

We can stay in Afghanistan and stabilize the situation, or we can get out and win, or we can get out and lose.

At a time when the insurgents are saying that time is working against them, my Democratic colleagues are introducing a measure to set a timetable for withdrawal in Iraq that will undercut the momentum that the insurgents themselves say we have built in Iraq.

To crush an insurgency you have to have political support from the society in which the insurgency operates.

I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that anymore. I believe we need to figure out how to fight the war on terror and to do it right. So either we clear and hold and build, or let's go home.

American forces focus just on the enemy, on Al Qaeda, and they forget about the people…. If you want to win the war against al Qaeda, you should protect the people first

The biggest of the big ideas that guided the strategy during the surge was explicit recognition that the most important terrain in the campaign in Iraq was the human terrain - the people - and our most important mission was to improve their security.

Despite what you hear in the news from the Obama administration and the military, our strategy of conducting infrequent airstrikes and re-taking pockets of Iraq and Syria terrain will only help us achieve short-lived tactical victories.

By the fall of 2007, my last remaining Iraqi friend in Baghdad had left. Once he was gone, my connection to the country and the war began to thin, even as the terror diminished. I missed the improvement that came with the surge, and so, in my nervous system, I never quite registered it.