Marcus Luttrell Quotes

It's much harder to detect a lone wolf than it is somebody who's associated with a larger organization who's having planning meetings and making phone calls to people in the organization. And so that is really how the jihad has really developed in the United States.

Nobody knows what self-radicalized means, and that's one of the weird things about the way that we talk about terrorism. We talk about radicalization as though it were a thing, as though you could sort of track it and identify it, and that's not the case.

Here's the reality: There is always a credible threat, and terror can strike at any time, anywhere, especially as lone wolf attacks backed up by Islamic ideology become more prevalent.

The terrorists exist, and I think we must speak to them, not to establish a dialogue-since for serious terrorists that is unfortunately out of the question - but to learn how their brains work, to be better able to fight them.

I'm over here with the French counterterrorism experts talking about the 'Charlie Hebdo' case, how we can stop foreign fighters from coming out of Iraq and Syria to Europe, but then we have this phenomenon in the United States where they can be activated by the Internet, and, really, terrorism has gone viral.

This is the new wave, the new generation of terrorism. It's gone viral. It's very dangerous, and it's very hard to stop.

It seems that, every several months, you have to expect there is going to be a terrorist incident or that there could be a terrorist incident somewhere. Right away, you're thinking, 'What are the consequences? Is this the first part of a larger attack? Is it coordinated, or a lone wolf?'

The new age of terrorism isn't on the battlefield: it's in your own backyard. Whether it's at a concert in France or a restaurant in the United States, terrorism doesn't have to happen in a military installation by any stretch of the imagination.

Under the cover of encryption, terror masterminds provide recruits with the tactics and tools necessary to carry out attacks using small arms and explosives. None of this requires any overseas travel.

The threat here focuses primarily on troubled souls in America who are being inspired or enabled online to do something violent for ISIL.

We obviously know that terrorist groups have become very reliant on social media.

Criminal and terrorist threats are morphing beyond traditional actors and tactics. We still have to worry about things like an al-Qaida cell plotting a large-scale attack, but we also now have to worry increasingly about homegrown violent extremists radicalizing in the shadows.

The terrorists may want to try and legitimize their violence by cynically appealing to Islamic motifs or doctrines, but there is no reason the rest of us should help them do it.

ISIS uses traditional media platforms as well as widespread social media campaigns to propagate its ideology. With the broad distribution of social media, terrorists can spot, assess, recruit, and radicalize vulnerable persons of all ages in the U.S. either to travel to foreign lands or to conduct an attack on the homeland.

Initially, terrorism was a certain mixture of politics, economics, and religion. Now, it seems that terrorism is more individual and done to avenge personal grudges. So there are two kinds of terrorism.

International terrorists who pursue completely mad objectives such as establishing a world caliphate or something of the sort, are quite adept at disguising their real aims as a struggle for independence in Chechnya.

Terrorism is carried out purposefully, in a cold-blooded, calculated fashion. The declared goals of the terrorist may change from place to place. He supposedly fights to remedy wrongs -- social, religious, national, racial. But for all these problems his only solution is the demolition of the whole structure of society. No partial solution, not even the total redressing of the grievance he complains of, will satisfy him -- until our social system is destroyed or delivered into his hands.

Islamic terrorists are new examples of an old problem with fascism.

I take a very simple view that a violent extremist at some point previously been an extremist, and by definition is an extremist, so you do need to look at that non-violent extremism.

Terrorism is the intentional use of, or threat to use violence against civilians or against civilian targets, in order to attain political aims.

There's nothing heroic about suicide bombers. They're mostly just dumb, brainwashed kids, stoned out of their minds.

Terrorism is simply the weapon by which the weak engage the strong.

ISIS is a radical jihadist group that is increasingly sophisticated in its ability, for example, to radicalize American citizens, in its inability to exploit loopholes in our legal immigration system, in its ability to capture and hold territory in the Middle East, as I outlined earlier, in multiple countries.

Radical Islamists are serious about killing in pursuit of their extreme objectives. Releasing their soldiers can only embolden them to take more Americans hostage. The deal for Sgt. Bergdahl may well turn out to have been a bargain with the devil.

Terrorism is in many, many ways the final utterance of voices unheard.