Barack Obama Quotes

IS [Islamic State] has played a major role in helping Bashar al-Assad to reposition Syria on the international scene. Now, it is almost impossible to come up with a solution that would exclude him. The political game appears to be very cynical indeed.

We need a united front against Islamic State and Assad happens to be the decisive power that can fight them. But the situation is preposterous because we also have to respect the calls for change. I would be in favor of a dignified change.

I see a bit of a contradiction between the fight against the Islamic State and the desire to remove the Assad regime. And even if you work with Russia, I'm just not sold that working with Russia is an effective way to hasten the end of the Assad regime or to enact any type of punitive measures.

It is very much in America's national security interests to ensure that the Taliban do not dominate Afghanistan and that neither ISIS nor al Qaeda continues their growth in the country.

I want to see ISIS destroyed.

One thing is certain: we will not be successful in this fight against ISIS and other extremist groups unless countries in the region are a major part of the coalition.

We will continue to work around the world to beat ISIS about where they may exist, these are horrible ideologies or murderous ideologies.

When I first raised the issue of the so-called Islamic State at the Munich Security Conference in February, speaking about its economy, its flexibility and pathology, people thought I was trying to scare them. But now we have experienced just that. If al-Qaida was version 2.0 of terror, then the Islamic State is version 5.0.

Let's make two things clear: Isil is not "Islamic." No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of Isil's victims have been Muslim. And Isil is certainly not a state.

You know who's upset now with ISIS? Al Qaeda. It's because ISIS is getting more attention than Al Qaeda. So now, Saturday night will be Ayman al-Zawahiri bobblehead night.

President al-Assad and his army are the only force that actually fights ISIS.

I look at what the president [Barack Obama] it doing, it adds up to me. We just have to keep - try to get more support for those people on the ground in Syria and Iraq who have to actually physically take the territory back.

Those localized efforts take a long time and they don't deal with the larger issue of ISIL and the question of what you're going to do to really have a solution here. We have to save Syria.

The fight against radical Islamic terrorists and ISIS has been called the war of our time.

Today Russia announced that it will join America's fight with the terror group ISIS. Then Putin said, "But I did not say which side.

We have a war against Daesh (the Islamic State, or IS) in Syria. A coalition that was led by the United States, with Saudi Arabia being one of the first members of that coalition.

Russia should join the international coalition against Islamic State. It is absurd that we are intervening on the side of the Shiites in a war between Sunnis and Shiites even though almost all Russian Muslims are Sunnis. Putin is creating big problems for us in his attempt to help Bashar Assad.

We believe that the United States and the rest of the international community can play a useful role by exerting influence on Pakistan to put a permanent and visible end to cross-border terrorism against India.

We are going to remain an important part of the coalition against ISIL.

We must take all that territory away from ISIS.

It's - getting Assad out is not the only priority. And so what we're trying to do is obviously defeat ISIS.

To destroy the Islamic State, you have to fix Syria. You have to look at the reasons that created the Islamic State. This is a huge task.

We can't afford to leave Afghanistan to the Taliban and the terrorists.

ISIL does something al-Qaida would never imagine: they test people by tasking them.

I've said for a long time there is no military solution to the crisis in Syria. There has to be a diplomatic solution. ISIL cannot be part of it. Al-Qaeda cannot be part of it, and Assad cannot be part of it. We are dealing with issues that have been going on for centuries, and I'm not sure the administration fully appreciates that.