Susan Davis Quotes

We can no longer apply the classic criteria to clearly determine whether and when we should use military force. We are waging war in Afghanistan, for example, but it's an asymmetrical war where the enemies are criminals instead of soldiers.

I believe that this is a different war than America has ever fought in the past. It is a non-conventional war. It means that you've got to use every tool you've got available to you.

Time and again, attempts by machine-age armies to impose their will on irregular forces supported by a sympathetic population failed.

Today, we have a powerful military that serves as a deterrent, but the enemy we have today is not like World War II, where you sign a piece of paper and the war is over. Today they're not in uniform. In my time we knew what the enemy looked like, we knew his weapons systems and such. Today, your cab driver may be the person, you have no idea. I don't know how we got into this fix, but we're there.

Twenty-first century war adds new risks: more and more often there are no front lines, no central command, no rules of engagement - only a chaotic collision of politics, power, faith and bloodlust. Victims are as likely to be civilians as soldiers.

The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerilla wins if he does not lose.

Irregular war is far more intellectual than a bayonet charge.

A political war can be fought from anywhere.

In Afghanistan this week, outnumbered Northern Alliance rebels on horseback defeated Taliban forces armed with tanks. Experts say the victory is just like the story of David and Goliath and David's friend, the Stealth Bomber.

Humans are very aggressive and scrappy, and go to war at the drop of a hat. However, a standard land war is no longer going to work as it is no longer technically possible.

Who do you call a civilian in a guerilla war? I mean, it might be a farmer by day or a merchant, a housewife, and by night the housewife may be helping to make landmines and booby traps and who knows.

We're fighting an enemy that is far different than any we have got before. It's a nontraditional kind of war, and I think we need to step back, recalibrate how we go about protecting our borders and protecting our people, and resetting our position in the world.

You can't talk about defeating insurgencies in the same way that you can with a conventional army.

Clearly-drawn front lines have become a thing of the past due to complex locations with ubiquitous enemy threats.

Defence must be more adaptable, able to respond quickly to the changes in the security environment and the character of conflict.

I don't think, post 9/11, we're going to wait for real obvious things like Country A attacking Country B - because Country A doesn't attack Country B any more.

If we were fighting an army, the work would be comparatively easy. We are fighting a secret revolutionary organization.

Throughout most of our species’ long and bloody slog, warfare has primarily been carried out by bands of loosely organized, ill-disciplined, and lightly armed volunteers who distained open battle in favor of stealthy raids and ambushes: the strategies of both tribal warriors and modern guerrillas and terrorists. In fact, conventional warfare is the relatively recent invention.

The consequences of U. S. superiority is that its opponents, both state and non-state actors, will have little choice but to resort to guerilla tactics and urban warfare because they simply cannot confront U. S. forces head on..

A counter-insurgency is won by intelligence—not by bombardment.

Instead of large-scale occupations, we should rely on small units of Special Forces who have proved it's infinitely more effective to work with a country's soldiers and citizens at eye level.

Look, it's no longer about capacity, how many ships, how many air wings, how many battalions. It's about capability. If we dominate cyber space and know and can read the other guy's mail, and with a very accurate laser-guided munitions put it in this window or that window, it's not how much, it's knowing exactly where to pinpoint a target.

The Special Operations community is rooted in unconventional warfare.

Unconventional warfare needs to remain the heart and soul of U.S. Special Operations Command and component commands.

We see a transformation of warfare from the big armies and battlefields in open spaces to a fragmentation of armed groups and smaller armies, which move into city centres, which increasingly become the theatre of warfare.