John le Carre Quotes

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

it is an end to the era of classical wars. Classical wars unified nations. But the [Islamic] terrorists don’t have the support of any nation.

Our country since its inception has been at war, every 15 or 20 years. But the war that we are fighting against radical Islamist jihadists is one that we must win. Our very existence is dependent upon that.

The War on Terror is really a war on Radical Islam.

The islamo-fascists see Israel as the appetizer. We are the main course.

Put simply, we are still at war with radical Islamic groups and an ideological movement that can't be ignored nor wished away.

Our enemy now is a stateless network of religious extremists. They do not obey the laws of war, they hide among peaceful populations and launch surprise attacks on civilians. They have no armed forces per se, no territory or citizens to defend and no fear of dying during their attacks.

We were to be forever at war with somebody. We were going to fight communism everywhere on earth even if it didn't threaten us. It was a holy war, just as we've made one on terrorism and Islam, equally stupid and equally irrelevant.

We're facing a very different sort of threat now, a more amorphous threat, al Qaeda, terrorism, and so on. And so the military has abandoned the two-war strategy.

Because Al-Qaeda has been a non-state centered organisation, many of these scenarios do not exactly apply. These are not wars between states. And yet, it seems to me that we make a mistake if we accept the view that states are fighting terrorism, since we have abundant evidence for accepting the idea of state terrorism, and what is most urgent is to track and expose how state terrorism operates under the rubric of "democracy."

We cannot fight communism all over the world, and I think we should have learned that lesson by now.

I think it's very hard to fight the war on terrorism if we're in retreat.

The two-war strategy was a product of the cold war, when we had to have the ability to fight the Russians on the plains of Europe and fight the Chinese on the Korean peninsula at the same time. That costs an awful lot of money.

I think our nation's at war with radical Islam. The primary goal of these groups is to attack our nation. Washington's a prime target.

It is time we admitted that we are not at war with “terrorism.” We are at war with Islam.

To me, every fundamentalist Muslim, no matter how peaceable in his own behavior, is part of a murderous movement and is thus, in some fashion, a foot soldier in the war that bin Laden has launched against civilization.

An all-volunteer army is best suited to fight the new wars of the 21st century.

As the CIA and KGB, like God and Satan, fight Miltonic battles across five continents.

We declared war on terror-it's not even a noun, so, good luck.

We need to be focused on defeating radical Islamic terrorists.

In war, numbers alone confer no advantage. Do not advance relying on sheer military power.

There is no war on terrorism; it is the great game speeded up. The difference is the rampant nature of the superpower, ensuring infinite dangers for us all.

In this way, it seems to me that, since 1984, my book on the logistics of perception has been proved totally correct. For instance, almost every conflict since then has involved the logistics of perception, including the war in Lebanon, where Israel made use of cheap drones in order to track Yasser Arafat with the aim of killing him.

First of all, I - right after September the 11th, I knew we were fighting a different kind of war. . . . And the people responsible for helping us protect and defend came forth with the current program, because it enables us to move faster and quicker. And that's important. We've got to be fast on our feet, quick to detect and prevent. . . .

Here's my strategy on the Cold War: we win, they lose.