Jalal Talabani Quotes

I was kidnapped by Sunni insurgents near Fallujah, in Iraq, ambushed by the Taliban in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan, and injured in a car accident that killed my driver while covering the Taliban occupation of the Swat Valley in Pakistan.

For many foreign fighters, the jihad in Iraq and Syria is a commuter war.

Mujahedin from around the world have been arriving at the Caucasus area to join with their brethren in the fight of the aggressor occupying forces of the Russian forces who came to subjugate Muslim Caucasia under their Christian Orthodox rule.

We cannot prevent rebels from entering cities and burning property..

We must take all that territory away from ISIS.

In the end, no amount of American forces can solve the political differences that lie at the heart of somebody else's civil war.

Iraq is now the central front in the war against al-Qaeda.

They've not been able to control any Iraqi city. We're waging war against this snake and we will be victorious.

These people are trying to shake the will of the Iraqi citizens, and they want us to leave...I think the world would be better off if we did leave.

Boko Haram represents the ultimate Fatwa of our time. The question is does the sect's Fatwa represent the articulated position of the majority of Muslims in this nation? My reading over the last few years is an unambiguous no. We are undergoing an affliction that many could not have imagined about a decade ago. Let us confront the ultimate horror now. To remain inactive at this moment is to betray our children and to consolidate the ongoing crimes against our humanity. We must take the battle to the enemy...We sent our children to school; we must bring them back to school.

Now let's make two things clear: ISIL is not 'Islamic.' No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL's victims have been Muslim. And ISIL is certainly not a state. It was formerly al Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq, and has taken advantage of sectarian strife and Syria's civil war to gain territory on both sides of the Iraq-Syrian border. It is recognized by no government, nor the people it subjugates. ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way.

In terms of Iraq, al Qaeda valued Iraq because we destroyed a government it wanted destroyed and because we put soldiers on the ground and forces that they could attack. Al Qaeda is basically an insurgent organization that was formed on the model of the Afghan groups. And being bred in that war, they value a contiguous safe haven as much as anything else.

Independence is a complex word in a foreign tongue. To resist occupation, whether you're a nation or merely a woman, you must understand the language of your enemy. Conquest and liberation and democrac and divorce are words that mean squat, basically, when you have hungry children and clothes to get out on the line and it looks like rain.

The war in Iraq was unwinnable.

The United States of America is engaged in a war against an extremist group of folks.

There's no such thing as a war against terrorism. It's idiotic. These are slogans. These are lies. It's advertising, which is the only art form we ever invented and developed.

We are in the process of trying to liberate that country. And at the moment where the war ends and the coalition forces occupy the areas where those capabilities - chemical and biological weapons - are likely to be, to the extent they haven't been moved out of the country, it obviously is important to find them.

Nipples aren't killing children. They should be more concerned about the wars that are happening. There's so much violence in the world. There are so many legitimate things to be upset about besides nipples.

Terrorism and war have something in common. They both involve the killing of innocent people to achieve what the killers believe is a good end.

Since war itself is the most extreme form of terrorism, a war on terrorism is profoundly self-contradictory.

I think the behavior of the troops has been a huge factor in the rise of the insurgency and in the rise of the anti-American feelings there[in Iraq].

In this global war against extremists who use murder as a weapon, Iraq is now the central front.

As many critics have pointed, out, terrorism is not an enemy. It is a tactic. Because the United States itself has a long record of supporting terrorists and using terrorist tactics, the slogans of today's war on terrorism merely makes the United States look hypocritical to the rest of the world.

Moreover, I would like to say that the sort of polar inertia we witnessed in the Kosovo War, the polar inertia involving 'automated war' and 'war-at-a-distance' is also terribly weak in the face of terrorism. For instance, in such situations, any individual who decides to place or throw a bomb can simply walk away. He or she has the freedom to move. This also applies to militant political groups and their actions.

There is no clear or meaningful difference between insurgency and civil war, or between national terrorism and civil war for that matter.