Tom Ridge Quotes

The tentacles of Islamic State are far-reaching, and the restrained and tepid international response that Mr. Obama has pursued will not eliminate this terrorist organization.

They may be rich, they may be powerful, they may have atom bombs, but Americans and British are no longer safe anywhere in the world…. They may perhaps be able to put Al-Qaeda out of commission, but that does not mean that there will not be other groups. They have been killing so-called terrorist all these years, but there'll simply be more and more terrorists

ISIS takes a long-term approach to its apocalyptic war with West - we have to do the same.

Islamic State is not a threat for any particular country but for the entire world. India is alert about IS.

We know that ISIL and other terrorist groups are actively encouraging people, around the world and in our country, to commit terrible acts of violence, oftentimes as lone-wolf actors.

Clinton was very early on aware of the problem of international terrorism.

We must be certain that we all realize that our enemy is not an enemy that is located in one single place. There are terrorist cells all around the globe.

I know the pain of having to deal with terrorism. And that's why, after 9-11, I was one of the first to join the international coalition to fight terrorism.

The relevance for 9/11 is that what 9/11 marked was the beginning of a struggle in which the terrorists come at us and strike us here on our home territory. And it's a global operation. It doesn't know national boundaries or national borders.

The war on terror is the war in Afghanistan.

We have to defeat ISIS. We have to make certain that we destroy them and that we push them back.

We need to defeat al Queda and other terrorist organizations.

United States and our allied partners need to wake up. ISIS is at war with us and civilization.

Some might say that that while al Qaeda the organization may be basically dead, its ideology continues to thrive and to inspire 'lone wolves' to attack the United States.

Al Qaeda and ISIS may have global aspirations, but their ability to penetrate a society is strongly influenced by local conditions.

9/11 was a gamechanger in so many terrible ways, not just for the United States and for our own national security apparatus but for the whole world. And those attacks blew apart any notion of separation between foreign and domestic threats, any notion that such attacks only happen to other people in other countries.

Global issues require common responses: Only together we can create the conditions to defeat Daesh and al Qaeda, block channels for terrorist financing, tackle foreign terrorist fighters.

From the moments Obama took office, he has downplayed the threats from radical Islamists.

Success means eliminating Al Qaeda's ability to launch terrorist attacks against the United States and our allies.

Whether core al Qaeda or its offshoots like AQAP, ISIS, or the many others - we are working with our partners to find and disrupt them, wherever they are, whether they're plotting attacks on Americans here at home or abroad.

Our war on terror begins with al-Qaida, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.

There is a fair amount of competition, obviously, with ISIL and the terrorist networks around the world, China also posing a different kind of threat to the rules-based order.

I think Americans have every reason to be worried about ISIS and the network of terrorist groups, because they have proven to be sophisticated and effective in wreaking violence and murder in many parts of the world, including in San Bernardino with their somehow connected radicalization of that couple there.

Osama bin Laden is very shrewd. But he struck me, even in 1997, as being remarkably out of touch. I remember thinking this does not look like the type of guy who walks to the top of a mountain with a mobile phone and says, "Operation B, attack."Now he is America's number one enemy. He's always wanted to be that.

Our challenge is much more pervasive than it would be if we were just facing one enemy in one place. [Instead there is] the Middle East, Iraq, North Korea, Iran. There's a relatively long list that we believe are linked to the al Qaeda network in the Philippines, in Indonesia and in Yemen and other places. That makes it very clear that this is a global network.