Sanjaya Baru Quotes

The Vietnamese have a secret weapon. It's their willingness to die beyond our willingness to kill. In effect, they've been saying, You can kill us, but you'll have to kill a lot of us; you may have to kill all of us. And, thank heaven, we are not yet ready to do that.

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

With an insurgency, people are the prize. We can win every battle and still lose the war.

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

The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerilla wins if he does not lose.

The United States Army had become reliant on firepower and technological superiority in its history of annihilating enemy forces...The concept that success in counterinsurgency consisted of separating the insurgents from popular support never took hold. The U.S. Army proceeded with its historical role of destroying the enemy army –p even if it had a hard time finding it.

Counter insurgency is something we can’t do, can’t do well, and shouldn’t be doing.

The guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win.

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

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

When the United States first went into Afghanistan in 2001, it devastated the Taliban and Al Qaeda in a matter of weeks using only a few hundred C.I.A. and Special Operations personnel, backed by American air power. Later, when the United States transitioned to conventional Pentagon stability operations, this success was reversed.

We don't kill Iraqis - our hands do not kill Iraqis. But we target only the occupier with all the means of resistance.

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

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.

To a degree, the West is reaping what it sowed from a major strategic blunder in the aftermath of 9/11 - the entire concept of a war on technique, that is, terrorism. Defining the enemy when fighting a concept was impossible.

You know as well as I do that counterinsurgency is a very nuanced type of military operation.

People who start wars never know exactly how they will turn out.

Insurgencies have a way of going on for a long time historically.

That war will never be won militarily.

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

It is permitted to surprise the infidels under cover of night, to bombard them with catapults and to attack them without declaring war.

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.

The United States, acting within the constraints imposed by its traditions and public attitudes, cannot crush a revolutionary movement which is sufficiently large, dedicated, competent and well supported…. The structure of U. S. military power is ill-suited to cope with guerrilla warfare waged by a determined, resourceful, and politically astute opponent.

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.

Wars the United States starts do not necessarily end when and how it wants them to.