Evan McMullin Quotes

If I had been in President Obama's shoes, I would have acted more decisively and strongly against ISIS.

If the U.S. wants to destroy ISIS, it can destroy ISIS. We won't end terrorism around the world. But we can destroy ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Prominent generals are telling us that. Prominent national-security strategists are telling us that. So let's do it.

We need a military strategy to defeat terrorists on the ground.

If your goal is to destroy ISIS, there needs to be a ground force. It could be American or foreign.

You bomb ISIL. You're not trying to bomb innocent people. And that requires intelligence and confidence in our military to be able to develop the kinds of targets that we need. We're already doing Special Forces, who are going to help us gather that intelligence and help advise and assist and train local forces so that they can go after ISIL in areas like Raqqah and Mosul.

We ought to recognize that we have an offensive responsibility to take the war to the terrorists where they are. That responsibility has waned in the last year as military and intelligence resources were withdrawn from Afghanistan and Pakistan to be used in Iraq.

Many in the U.S. military believe ISIS needs to be immediately, and repeatedly, smashed by American drones and warplanes.

Our priority is to go after ISIL. And so what we have said is that we are not engaging in a military action against the Syrian regime. We are going after ISIL facilities and personnel who are using Syria as a safe haven, in service of our strategy in Iraq.

This policy of containment is not a winning strategy. We need a policy to defeat and destroy ISIS once and for all.

Terrorist groups and their extremist state sponsors cannot be fought with kid gloves and flowery words of persuasion. As the U.S. has displayed in Afghanistan and in Iraq, only a vigilant and determined campaign of confrontation can deter and obstruct them.

Our mission to defeat ISIS has been slowed down by the need to defend from additional Iranian attacks.

If we have intelligence on the location of terrorist training centers, it is insane not to act.

Immediately after taking office, I will ask my generals to present to me a plan within 30 days to defeat and destroy ISIS.

Instead of being a Woodrow Wilson democracy promoter we ought to hunt down our enemies and kill ISIS rather than creating opportunities for ISIS to take control of new countries.

I just want to say that we are going to hit ISIS hard, and I mean really hard, but I do think this.

The biggest problem I have with the stupidity of our foreign policy, we have Mosul. They think a lot of the ISIS leaders are in Mosul. So we have announcements coming out of Washington and coming out of Iraq, we will be attacking Mosul in three weeks or four weeks. Well, all of these bad leaders from ISIS are leaving Mosul. Why can't they do it quietly?

Among all the upheavals of war with al Qaeda, the surest indicator of the historic stakes is the ongoing rotation of top U.S. government managers - scores at a time - into a bunker deep underground and far from Washington.

We barely missed killing Bin Laden. There were numerous findings issued by the President to kill him. We rolled up terrorist cells. We stopped the millennium bombings.

The scale of the ISIS threat is not yet matched by a clarity of approach for securing their defeat.

President Obama had voiced strong support for the effort in Afghanistan during his campaign, pledging to add two brigades, which he did. But since the inauguration... the administration had signaled that the U.S. commitment needed careful assessment, and we needed to recalibrate the strategy and objectives.

I am prepared to vote in support of a new military authorization that specifically authorizes U.S. military actions against ISIS. We must stand up against this vile enemy and protect United States citizens both at home and abroad.

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

The mission - the overall mission is to dismantle and defeat and disrupt al-Qaeda. But we have to make sure there's not a safe haven that returns in Afghanistan.

The war we are fighting today against terrorism is a multifaceted fight. We have to use every tool in our toolkit to wage this war - diplomacy, finance, intelligence, law enforcement, and of course, military power - and we are developing new tools as we go along.

We have to defeat ISIS. We have to make certain that we destroy them and that we push them back.