David Petraeus Quotes

We've got a very difficult situation created by this embrace of the so-called Arab Spring. And that's not getting better. It's getting worse. The carnage for the people of Syria is horrific, and it's quite frankly too little, too late to reverse a lot of that.

Syria cannot continue this way—killing their people

Syria has become the great tragedy of the century—a disgraceful humanitarian calamity with suffering and displacement unparalleled in recent history.

Syria: It’s a messy civil war and we should not be involved in it.

The deplorable Syrian refugee crisis was created because Syrian President Bashar al-Assad started a war on his people, and the international community refused to confront him.

Assad has to go. I mean, the way that ISIS can recruit, and the rebels that are in the north, and all the chaos that's happening through a lot of Syria circles around a lot of people that do not like Assad.

Both sides in Syria are bad. One side is a brutal dictator, and the other includes Islamists and terrorists who are dangerous already and who would be brutal in power if given the chance.

It was wrenching to read about the brutality of Assad every morning, to see images of family homes reduced to rubble. I felt we had to do something in Syria.

Extremism in Syria cannot be contained within Syria.

Just when we think it cannot get any worse, the bar of [Syrian] depravity sinks lower.

We have no vital national interest in Syria's civil war.

I am absolutely not saying that Milosevic might not be responsible for all sorts of atrocities, but I believe that what's been left out of public debate and the press is that there was a civil war going on there.

Why is Assad more responsible for all the deaths in Syria than those fighting to overthrow and kill him?

Unlike the Vietnam boat people or Cuban refugees after Castro came to power, the U.S. has no moral responsibility for the chaos in Syria. In fact, just the opposite is the case.

We have to stop the killing. We need to let the refugees - we need to let Syrian citizens go home.

The fate of Syria hangs in the balance, but it is entirely possible that the fall of the Assad regime will result in anarchy and cause Syria to turn into a second Afghanistan, a base for anti-Israel terrorism.

The understanding of Syria's devastating civil war has been distorted by the immense danger and difficulty of covering it.

Sri Lankans of every kind, overwhelmingly the poorest, have been bombed by one side or the other for decades.

Some leaders think time will solve the problem. Their hope is that Assad's regime will ultimately fall from the heavy toll of the horrors it has spawned. From past experience with such regimes, this scenario is unlikely to happen.

I cannot either change or do anything bad or good to the Syrian people and Syrian citizens.

I think that's the main threat in Bosnia and Rwanda and Zaire. There doesn't seem to be much willingness to engage these problems unless they directly affect national security interests.

The Syrians are sons of bitches.

Failed states are mainly a threat to their own inhabitants. We should help them anyway.

The migrant question is directly linked to the crisis in Syria and Iraq.

As the crisis in Syria grows and the humanitarian tragedy becomes more clear, I appreciated Prime Minister Netanyahu's perspective on the changes and volatility in the region.