Mahathir Mohamad Quotes

To defeat Islamic extremist terrorism, we must put them on defense. If they are at war against us - which they have declared - we must commit ourselves to unconditional victory against them.

Today, few terrorist organizations still employ the 'al-Qaeda model' in which individuals travel to terrorist training camps overseas and then are deployed to the West to inflict atrocities.

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

A big challenge in combating terrorism is learning how to think about things that we can't imagine.

In 2001, terrorism was fought in a completely different way.

Terrorism is resorted to for practical reasons because there is no other tool available. And those who use terrorism, and then subsequently become the targets of terrorism, understand its power and how difficult it is to counter it. Not just militarily. But especially in terms of international perception.

We cannot allow Afghanistan to become again a haven for terrorists who inspire, plan and provide support for attacks like those of 11 September 2001, of 7 July 2005 in London, and more.

The central role in the fight against terrorism is with national authorities.

I think the American people believe in stopping and preventing terrorism pretty much at any cost.

I don't think you're going to be seeing the U.S. employing large army divisions to deal with small terrorist groups again. I don't think they're going to be occupying foreign nations in order to dry up terrorist groups within them. I think that lesson has been learned.

We are in a war on terrorism. We need to conduct that war and take it to the terrorists, not here at home.

The battle against terrorism is not only a military fight but primarily a battle of information.

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.

Terrorists always have the advantage of surprise.

And we need to maintain our foothold in the fight against terrorism and terrorist groups and respond to any degradation of Iraqi security or stability.

If it is terrorism, if it is war on terror, then the Afghan people will join you on terror.

Spontaneous operations performed by individuals and cells here and there over the whole world, without connections between them, have put the local and international intelligence apparatus in a state of confusion, as arresting the members of aborted cells does not influence the operational activities of others who are not connected with them.

Terrorism is not an enemy. It is a tactic used by an enemy in pursuit of a political objective. There will be no final victory against terrorism, but there may be victories that are close enough to final against particular political groups that use terror tactics.

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

If you want to know what a terrorist is doing, you have to put an agent in their camp.

The War on Terror is the only war we have ever been involved with in which our enemy did not want the war to end…. Terrorists do not want to defeat us in the usual sense; they want us to become more like them.

Killing every insurgent is normally impossible … Force must be used with incredible restraint and discrimination and … risks generating popular resentment, creating martyrs that motivated new recruits, and producing cycles of violence.

We have an obligation to go after Al Qaeda wherever they are.

Notwithstanding the repeated denials of governments – terrorism can, in the right conditions and with the appropriate strategy and tactics, succeed in attaining at least some of its practitioners’ fundamental aims.

You cannot fight one terrorist organization by making use of another terrorist organization.