John Abizaid Quotes

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

Counter insurgency is something we can’t do, can’t do well, and shouldn’t be doing.

An insurgency is the most difficult to fight of all military activities.

Air power will not defeat ISIS. It has not been able to deny ISIS freedom of maneuver and the ability to attack at will.

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

On the Vietnam War: I've lived under situations where every decent man declared war first and I've lived under situations where you don't declare war. We've been flexible enough to kill people without declaring war.

But clearly, this is what this is about. It's about pushing the security bubble out. It's about rooting out every last guy, so that there's not even somebody who can fire a single, solitary RPG round from some little qalat out here.

Instead of stealing upon each other and taking every advantage to kill the enemy and save their own people, as we do, they [whites] march out, in open daylight, and fight, regardless of the number of warriors they may loose!

The only method that proved effective, not justified or moral but effective, is when Arabs plant mines on our side. If we try to search for the [particular] Arab [who planted mines], it has no value. But if we harass the nearby village ... then the population there comes out against the [infiltrators] ... and the Egyptian Government and the Transjordanian Government are [driven] to prevent such incidents, because their prestige is assailed ... the method of collective punishment so far has proved effective.

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

Maybe it's the spy novelist in me looking for a future plot, but I hope the U.S. and its allies are thinking how to operate 'unconventionally' in Iraq and Syria in ways that undermine the Islamic State.

Offensive operations and hunting down the enemy is an integral part of any counterinsurgency approach.

Counter-insurgency, as you know, is a roller-coaster affair.

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.

The Special Operations community is rooted in unconventional warfare.

You've got to hae ground forces that are capable of going after them and rooting them out.

And down the dunes a thousand guns lie crouched,Unseen, beside the flood -Like tigers in some Orient jungle crouchedThat wait and watch for blood.Meanwhile, through streets still echoing with trade,Walk grave and thoughtful men,Whose hands may one day wield the patriot's bladeAs lightly as the pen.

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

A colonial war is a very dirty kind of war. You're not fighting armed forces. You're fighting mostly unarmed people. And to fight that kind of war requires professional killers, which means mercenaries.

When guerillas engage a stronger enemy, they withdraw when he advances, harass him when he stops, strike him when he is weary, pursue him when he withdraws.

There isn't a war on terror, there is a war of terror.

It is narual for enemy to attack on the weaker side of the adversary.

How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?

I do not believe that a counterterrorism strategy all by itself, without a sufficient level of counterinsurgency, will work.

[Francisco Franco] said they should resort to guerrilla war. Which has a history in Spain.