Pete Hoekstra Quotes

Come to the so-called caliphate and live the life of some sort of glory ...; and if you can't come, kill somebody where you are; kill somebody in uniform; kill anybody; if you can cut their head off, great; videotape it; do it; do it; do it.... Kill, kill, kill.

Terrorists

The terrorists of today are not wild-eyed, illiterate fanatics who merely obey the orders of their evil leaders. They are educated, well-off, normal people with wives and families to love and look after. We cannot know they are terrorists until they have committed their horrible crimes.

ISIS targeting the U.S. military is like a sheep targeting a lion.

If you are talking about terrorism, you need to sit down and understand what is making these people put dynamite around their waists and blow themselves up.

Staying in a very public fight with the U.S. is exactly what Al Qaeda wants.

We're seeing the development of tactics in Iraq, such as suicide bombing. Insurgents have been driving cars with explosives into hotels and office buildings. The recruitment may be even more prolific outside Iraq.

Terrorists aren’t states; they are martyrs with no address.

Notice that the leaders of Hamas do not send their own sons and daughters, and their own grandchildren, to blow themselves up …

Head for jihad and have your guns ready.

Terrorism is a means/a tactic, not an ideological or defined physical enemy

I think it's important to note that after the airstrikes began in Iraq and Syria, ISIS began a very aggressive social media campaign calling for these types of attacks, these lone wolf attacks.

For many terrorists, carrying out an attack allowed them to become the heroes of their own story.

Terrorists regard themselves as a vanguard. They're trying to mobilize others to their cause. I mean, every specialist on terrorism knows that.

I think ISIS is achieving the objectives that they have set out to achieve. I think that they feel probably very emboldened. They feel pretty good. Their resiliency is extraordinary.

Not all of the Islamic State killers are going to die on the battlefield.

ISIL is inspiring groups that already exist to rebrand themselves, but in rebranding themselves into a more radical ideology. That's what makes it dangerous.

We're dealing with an enemy now, ISIS, that has a very sophisticated social media program.

Terrorists follow tried and tested tactics.

The weapon of suicide bombing is so desperate that you aren't even left with the possibility of taking revenge or punishing anyone; the terrorist is killed along with his victims, his blood mixing with theirs.

Nobody, absolutely nobody, straps a bomb on their body because they were recruited from the Internet. It takes an enormous amount of personal face-to-face contact and time in order to recruit a young person into the cause of jihad.

Terrorists, in ungoverned spaces, disseminate poisonous propaganda and training materials to attract troubled souls around the world to their cause.

This is a formidable enemy. To dismiss it as a bunch of 'cowards' perpetuating 'senseless acts of violence' is complacent nonsense. People willing to kill thousands of innocents while they kill themselves are not cowards. They are deadly vicious warriors and need to be treated as such.

We've got to recognize that when we march into Iraq, we're setting up the card tables in front of every university in the Arab world, the Islamic world, to recruit for al-Qaida.

The terrorist determines the time, manor, place and mode of attack.