Adolf Hitler Quotes

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Today, we have a powerful military that serves as a deterrent, but the enemy we have today is not like World War II, where you sign a piece of paper and the war is over. Today they're not in uniform. In my time we knew what the enemy looked like, we knew his weapons systems and such. Today, your cab driver may be the person, you have no idea. I don't know how we got into this fix, but we're there.

We have an interest in combating tactics in war that are abhorrent and that only fuel terrorism because they incite people on the ground.

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

Asymmetrical warfare is a euphemism for terrorism, just like collateral damage is a euphemism for killing innocent civilians.

Clearly-drawn front lines have become a thing of the past due to complex locations with ubiquitous enemy threats.

I believe that this is a different war than America has ever fought in the past. It is a non-conventional war. It means that you've got to use every tool you've got available to you.

We don't have a war on terror - that's a technique. We didn't have a war on blitzkriegs, and we didn't have a war on surprise attacks.

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

Time and again, attempts by machine-age armies to impose their will on irregular forces supported by a sympathetic population failed.

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

Our enemy now is a stateless network of religious extremists. They do not obey the laws of war, they hide among peaceful populations and launch surprise attacks on civilians. They have no armed forces per se, no territory or citizens to defend and no fear of dying during their attacks.

The simple and terrifying reality, forbidden from discussion in America, was that despite spending $600 billion a year on the military, despite having the best fighting force the world had ever known, they were getting their asses kicked by illiterate peasants who made bombs out of manure and wood.

There is in guerrilla warfare no such thing as a decisive battle; there is nothing comparable to the fixed, passive defense that characterizes orthodox war.

A colonial war is a very dirty kind of war. You're not fighting armed forces. You're fighting mostly unarmed people. And to fight that kind of war requires professional killers, which means mercenaries.

There isn't a war on terror, there is a war of terror.

George Washington hated the guerrillas. He wanted to imitate the British red coat armies, fighting as gentlemen are supposed to fight.

Terrorism and deception are weapons not of the strong, but of the weak.

Guerrilla war is a kind of war waged by the few but dependent on the support of many.

Part of this new world of completely improvisational terrorism is that there were codes of war that disintegrated in the face of terrorism.