Richard K. Betts Quotes

The administration asserts that two thirds or three quarters of al-Qaeda’s managers have been captured or killed, and that al-Qaeda must therefore be on the ropes. Why spend vast sums defending against it?

I think the American people believe in stopping and preventing terrorism pretty much at any cost.

It's not just the small-potatoes post-9/11 Homeland spending that feels a little off mission. It's the big-ticket stuff too.

We can fight the War on Terrorism in other places around the world or we can fight it here in America. The right choice is to fight those terrorists where they are.

The counterterrorism strategy known as CONTEST aimed to reduce the risk to the UK and its interests overseas from terrorism, so that people can go about their lives freely and with confidence.

Because of what happened on 9/11, a lot of our resources, our money and our people were dedicated to the terrorism fight.

In 2001, terrorism was fought in a completely different way.

The war in Afghanistan is too important to be reduced to a political football. We are fighting there to protect our national security. We are confronting the Taliban-led insurgency to prevent terrorists returning to that country.

If the Pentagon truly confined itself to providing defense, then presumably we wouldn't need a whole separate government agency to provide 'Homeland Security.'

I believe the war on terror is the vital discussion of this decade and of our generation, probably. To win the war on terror, you need a good offense and a good defense. On defense, I regret to say, basically, this administration has not come close to doing what is necessary.

The central role in the fight against terrorism is with national authorities.

We are in a war on terrorism. We need to conduct that war and take it to the terrorists, not here at home.

America decided we were going to stand by and let Americans die at the hands of terrorists a long time ago.

President George W. Bush's aggressive war on Islamic terrorism produced a 100 percent perfect track record of keeping the United States safe from another attack. The result has been increased security for the American people, who, in turn, have become complacent about the true nature of the threat.

You can gesture at the transnational problem of Islamist terrorism all you like, but it's just hot air unless you invest in proper security on the ground in your own country, with the right safeguards to civil liberties.

We are keeping New Jersey one step, several steps, ahead of terrorism.

There isn’t any doubt that in fighting the War on Terrorism you increase the power and scope of government, and it becomes more intrusive.

A campaign against terrorism requires checks on ”over stretch” and a viable exit strategy.

There's no national strategy to deal with combating terrorism and foreign fighters.

The nature of Homeland Security is that no news is good news. And no news sometimes means somebody got interdicted at the border, somebody got interdicted before they could get on an airplane, somebody was arrested providing material support to terrorism. Homeland Security means very often something you never hear about.

I am ready to debate how we fight terrorism without giving up our liberty.

I think it's encouraging that President Trump is talking about strengthening our national defense, something he ran on again.

We have to make sure we control who enters our country. And we have to sustain and increase our efforts to fight the terrorists at their source, both on the ground and in the battle for hearts and minds.

For the FBI and for the United States, the war on terrorism is a complex and perplexing issue. It is as complex and perplexing as any issue we have ever faced.

Those are the two issues: Protecting the homeland and stopping the war and going after ISIS in a way that ends the terrorism.