101 Quotes by John Abizaid

I think you also understand that one of the key things that's got to be done in Iraq is to build a mentality of understanding that the military needs to be subordinate to civilian control and respectful of its own people.

In other words, for every 10 enemy you kill you bring on 20 new recruits to their anti-coalition cause then essentially you are working against yourself.

And so I think that if the person has the funds, the network, and the equipment to do this, and also the experience, which is the key factor, then they can be quite deadly.

Being on the run, having to change the way that you do business, being unable to plan in a safe and secure environment, always looking over your shoulder, knowing that some day somebody's going to knock on your door and it's going to be your last.

Everybody needs to understand that I learned Arabic from the United States Army as a second language. I never spoke it at home.

You know as well as I do that counterinsurgency is a very nuanced type of military operation.

But my Arabic is pretty good. It's good enough to have conversations with people, to understand what they say, to understand what they're feeling.

I think what actually works best is local-level individual targeting of key leadership nodes.

You don't build a new power plant in the United States overnight. It takes years to build.