Gordon Adams Quotes

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

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

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.

We cannot kill or capture our way out of an industrial-strength insurgency.

Counter insurgency is unworkable without a responsive and politically popular national government.

On the Vietnam War: I've lived under situations where every decent man declared war first and I've lived under situations where you don't declare war. We've been flexible enough to kill people without declaring war.

Iraq and Afghanistan will, over time, become stable. But the War on Terror will continue long after Iraq and Afghanistan have had success in standing up their own governments.

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.

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.

We can no longer apply the classic criteria to clearly determine whether and when we should use military force. We are waging war in Afghanistan, for example, but it's an asymmetrical war where the enemies are criminals instead of soldiers.

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.

We have to rearrange in our minds what defense actually means. Does it mean you're going to try to protect the boundaries of a piece of land, or does it mean you're going to try to help the people on that piece of land to live a better life?

Even in matters of defense—the purpose for which government was instituted among men—no government can promise any longer that it can protect civilians and that they are not going to be harmed by war.

I don’t think one can speak of defeating the IRA, of eliminating them completely, but it is the design of the security forces to reduce their level of violence to something like an acceptable level.

Paramilitary Action: An initial shipment of approximately 15 tons of arms and ammunition is now ready for shipment from [DELETED] and subsequent transshipment to Colonel Castillo Armas in Nicaragua.... This material is intended for use by [Colonel Castillo Armas] in his Nicaraguan training center and to test facilities for clandestine introduction of arms into Guatemala.

The chief threats to security come from failed states.

Contributing to the maintenance of peace by making clear its determination to exercise the right of individual or collective self-defense … should any armed attack occur affecting its national security.

The European NATO Counties are not interested in being liberated after 6 months of fighting on their territory. They are only interested in preventing the initial attack.

Air power will not defeat ISIS. It has not been able to deny ISIS freedom of maneuver and the ability to attack at will.

We want to make the insurgents come to us. Make them be the aggressors. What I want to do is get on the inside looking out - instead of being on the outside looking in.

You cannot deal with an industrial-strength extremist problem just with force of arms. You have to have that political component as well.

Military leaders, many of whom were students of counterinsurgency, recognized the dangers of an incremental escalation and the historical lesson that 'trailing' an insurgency typically condemned counterinsurgents to failure.

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