Richard Engel Quotes & Sayings

President Bashar Assad's regime is in the unique position of being targeted both by Israel and supporters of al Qaeda. — Richard Engel

Any information about U.S. special operations forces is highly sensitive. — Richard Engel

The Donetsk People's Republic is the self-declared pro-Russian government that wants to break away from Ukraine. — Richard Engel

All countries take the kidnapping of their troops seriously. But it drives Israel absolutely crazy. It is an affront to every person. Almost everyone in Israel is or has been a soldier. There is total commitment to the principle "leave no man behind" because nearly everyone could be that man or woman. All men and women, except some Israeli Arabs and ultra-Orthodox Jews, serve in the military, and remain in the reserves. When a soldier is kidnapped, Israelis think of their own sons and daughters. That — Richard Engel

MOST OF THE NATIONS OF the Middle East can be divided into those with long histories and no oil, and those that have lots of oil and very little history. With a few notable exceptions, both groups share a common feature: they were cobbled together by outsiders. The borders of the modern Middle East were drawn by Europeans after the First World War with no regard for the interests or backgrounds of the people who inhabited it. — Richard Engel

I could scarcely believe that my new home was engulfed by war before I even had time to find an apartment. It seemed that war followed me everywhere I went. — Richard Engel

The Muslim Brotherhood is a fundamentalist group. — Richard Engel

The Taliban may pine for a pre-industrial society, but most Afghans do not. — Richard Engel

Osama bin Laden organized an attack that was carried out against the United States, New York, Pentagon, and the other aircraft, with 19 attackers, 19 guys with box cutters. An attack that probably cost almost nothing. — Richard Engel

I don't look for good-news stories or bad-news stories. — Richard Engel

An Egyptian newspaper once publicly identified me as the C.I.A. station chief in Cairo. It seemed so stupid at the time. I was only 24, a little young to be a station chief, and, of course, I was never with the C.I.A. — Richard Engel

I may have been in stage four, but I wasn't completely crazy. At least eighty-six journalists had been killed in Iraq, more than in any other conflict since World War II, and another thirty-eight had been taken hostage. More would die in the years to come. I knew I had to limit my movements and take special care when I did go out. — Richard Engel

The bombing started up again, with explosions all around us, in broad daylight, but no one in the restaurant even flinched. Iraqis seemed numb after a quarter century under Saddam's whip-hand rule. It was heartbreaking to see what a harsh dictatorship can do to the human soul. In less than a week, I had grown almost inured to explosions and fires. — Richard Engel

The Arab Spring is over. The days of the protesters with laptops and BlackBerrys in Tahrir Square are long gone. — Richard Engel

We were meat to be bought and sold. Speaking Arabic made me a curious and unusual product. I didn't want to be special. I didn't want them to be curious about me. — Richard Engel

Israel sees the world just beyond its borders collapsing. — Richard Engel

A lot of Iran's empowerment is a result of the war in Iraq. — Richard Engel

Afghanistan does have an air force: It has two C-130s. I saw one of them. It was nice, a gift from the United States. But two planes don't even make a Caribbean charter airline, let alone an air force for a country at war. — Richard Engel

The Saudis, and in some cases the CIA, had encouraged and funded their foreign jihads, and these men had seen combat, lived hard in the mountains, did what their religion asked them to do. Then they came home to Egypt and were rewarded with a death sentence. The result was the creation of a standing army of jihadis who couldn't go home. They would go on to found al-Qaeda, which became something of a jihadi veterans association. History is always obvious in retrospect, but in this case the rise of al-Qaeda should have been fairly easy to predict. — Richard Engel

Bin Laden is dead, and most of his friends are dead. But did it need to cost a trillion dollars and two land wars, including one that didn't have to do with Al Qaeda? Probably not. — Richard Engel

What is the Obama Doctrine? It seems to be one of disengagement, to try to ignore the hot, religious, dry, poor countries from Algeria to Pakistan. — Richard Engel

Each time there is a conflict between Israel and Gaza, accusations fly over who started it, each side blaming the other. — Richard Engel

If Syria collapses completely, the United States and the world would have to consider who, and what, fills the vacuum. — Richard Engel

Once you start bombing in Syria, when you start looking for targets, there will be a lot. — Richard Engel

Just as police and fire sirens reminded New Yorkers they were home, the sound of car bombs reminded me I was in Baghdad, which had become home for me. I was like a battered wife who can't leave the man abusing her. I had moved into stage four and assumed, as a matter of math, that I was going to die in Baghdad. But still I wanted to stay. — Richard Engel

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

Every child is taught if you try to please everyone, you end up upsetting everyone. — Richard Engel

Osama Bin Laden is dead. Killed not by a massive troop deployment but by a commando raid carried out by a few dozen highly trained men and helicopters. — Richard Engel

The Syrian border town of Qa'im was the main gateway Islamic radicals used to go to Iraq. Syria became the passageway for extremists from Egypt, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations to fight a jihad against American forces in Iraq. — Richard Engel

The U.S. spent billions of dollars to build a secular, professional national Iraqi army but failed because, despite all the U.S.-supplied guns, tanks and planes, the Iraqi military fell apart when challenged by a band of terrorists. — Richard Engel

The people of Gaza are trapped. Israel has sealed the border, and they have no way to leave the Gaza Strip to do business. — Richard Engel

Traditionally, all the kings of Saudi Arabia have been sons of the founder of Saudi Arabia, and they've gone from one son to the next. — Richard Engel

I now saw war as a constant, akin to wildfires. They break out unless you work actively to prevent them. — Richard Engel

Everyone knows what can happen to soldiers who are in front line units. — Richard Engel

For eight years, you had the Bush administration with a very interventionist policy, driving into world affairs, driving primarily into the Islamic world, army first or fist first. — Richard Engel

The Iraqi government will try and retake some of the cities have that been captured by ISIS. That means the Shiite government dropping bombs on civilian areas, on Sunni cities. There will likely be a response with car bombings here in Baghdad, and this could be a long fight. — Richard Engel

I think it's really important to start thinking about infrastructure as essential national security. — Richard Engel

You gotta love the names. They're so eager, earnest, and hopeful: Camp Prosperity, Camp Liberty, and Camp Victory are the names of just a few of the U.S. military bases in Baghdad. — Richard Engel

I went to a psychiatrist (NBC insisted we all go) and told her I had been through traumatic experiences before and understood that the kidnapping would leave "fingerprints" on me for a while. The key was knowing what to expect. If you get blind drunk, you know you're going to wake up with a hangover. By the same token, I expected post-traumatic stress symptoms - anger, irritability, a sense of isolation - and I experienced those feelings, off and on, for several months. It's like having the monkey on your back again, and being self-aware helps shake him off. — Richard Engel

Insurgencies are easy to make and hard to stop. Only a few ingredients need to combine to create an insurgency; like oxygen and fire, they're very common and mix all too often. The recipe is, simply, a legitimate grievance against a state, a state that refuses to compromise, a quorum of angry people, and access to weapons. — Richard Engel

Persia is 7,000 years old and will fight to survive. — Richard Engel

Unfortunately, the American policy towards Pakistan is just to worry and express concern, and that is not a clear policy at all. — Richard Engel

War is not a petri dish to examine and analyze our emotions. — Richard Engel

There are clearly many Egyptian free-thinkers and intellectuals - lots of wonderful Egyptian artists and architects and scientists. — Richard Engel

Ottoman provinces were re-formed and cobbled together into states. The region was carved up with little regard to ethnic, religious, or territorial concerns. The flawed and cavalier treaties of World War I explain to a large degree why the Middle East remains unstable and angry today. Every Muslim schoolchild is taught this arc of history and resents it: Islam's golden era of the Arab caliphate, the Crusades, the Mongol devastation, the rise of the Ottomans, World War I, the carving up of the Middle East by Europe, and the poverty, weakness, and wars in the Muslim world of the last century. This is the basic and sad narrative taught at every mosque, and it has the benefit of being broadly accurate. — Richard Engel

Damascus was the seat of the Ummayad Caliphate in the 7th and 8th centuries. — Richard Engel

I have seen heroics - soldiers saving other soldiers' lives - and horrors. — Richard Engel

...in the assassination of three of its first four caliphs, the "successors" to Mohammed and rulers of the faithful. Those early assassinations led to the split between Sunnis and Shiites, battle lines drawn fourteen centuries ago that US troops would encounter, and help reignite, in Iraq. There is no distinction between modern and ancient history in the Middle East. No region is more obsessed with its own past. Islam began as a force to be reckoned with, and Muslims have longed to return to their former glory. — Richard Engel

If democracy brings an undemocratic group to power, is that a victory for democracy? — Richard Engel

9/11 was a terrible, horrific, tragic day. — Richard Engel

The Muslim Prophet Mohammed was a big believer in charity and firmly established helping those in need as a basis of the religion. — Richard Engel

When I take risks now, I do so only when I have to and with every precaution. I used to prospect for news, dropping into places to see what was up. Well, I could go to parts of Libya today and find lots of good stories, but I probably wouldn't be around to tell them. — Richard Engel

After literally hundreds of firefights, Chosen Company became increasingly battle-hardened. And they also became increasingly suspicious of their Afghan counterparts, believing - with their lives on the line at the end of the day - that they could only truly rely on themselves. — Richard Engel

The dangers of an Afghan collapse are many: Afghan deaths, a loss of American prestige, a loss of NATO prestige, a moral blow to U.S. troops and veterans, a Taliban resurgence, huge setbacks for women, and greater power for Pakistan and Pakistani extremists. — Richard Engel

How can you claim infallibility and claim that in these 114 [drone] strikes there was just one mistake
one person killed that was a civilian
and at the same time say, 'Well, we don't really know how many people were killed or who they were, but we know they weren't civilians'? I don't know how you can do that. — Richard Engel

Women, who enjoyed a high social status and levels of education under Saddam, saw terrible setbacks as Iraq fell into civil war. As a result of the sectarian violence from 2005-2007, women retreated to their homes and fell from public view. — Richard Engel

I don't think you're going to be seeing the U.S. employing large army divisions to deal with small terrorist groups again. I don't think they're going to be occupying foreign nations in order to dry up terrorist groups within them. I think that lesson has been learned. — Richard Engel

There was an insurgency under President Hosni Mubarak in the 1990s. Egyptian police and soldiers fought weekly battles with Islamists in the sugarcane fields and thick reeds along the Nile in rural southern villages like Minya, Sohag, Enna and Assiout. — Richard Engel

There weren't many weapons in Egypt in the 1990s. Police controls on guns were very strict back then. That is no longer the case in Egypt today. — Richard Engel

It took from 1967 to 2003 - over three decades - to build the big men. It took a decade - 2003 to 2013 - to destroy them. I suspect a new generation of big men will return. No people can tolerate chaos forever. Dictators will offer a way out and many of the exhausted and brutalized people of the Middle East will accept them, and I suspect Washington will as well. — Richard Engel

Many senior government officials, CIA, FBI, counter terrorism officials - when they look back at the decade, they effectively conclude that the United States overreacted after 9/11. — Richard Engel

ISIS wouldn't have existed without the US invasion of Iraq. It was born out of the Sunnis' feeling of alienation, their belief that they'd been pushed aside - which, of course, they had been. Sunnis suffered a thirteen-century-old injustice with power stripped from them by Washington and given to Iraqi Shiites and their coreligionists in Iran. This grievance is at the core of ISIS ideology. Simply put, no Iraq war, no ISIS. Two — Richard Engel

The Crusades, waged intermittently from 1095 to 1291, but which continued in waves for centuries after that, were military campaigns sanctioned principally by the Roman Catholic Church to reclaim the Holy Land. American students barely learn about the Crusades, but they are essential to understanding the wars of the last decade. — Richard Engel

The U.S., often in secret, carries out counterterrorism missions all the time, with drones in places like Yemen and Somalia. — Richard Engel

President George W. Bush, in his now-rare public appearances and interviews, still refuses to acknowledge he did anything to help Iran. But it doesn't really matter what he thinks. — Richard Engel

In the Muslim world according to bin Laden, the Ottomans hardly count. Islamic fundamentalists look back almost exclusively to the Arab caliphate, particularly its early years. Those who see history as bin Laden did are generally called Salafi Muslims. Those who want to act like bin Laden to change the system through violence are called Salafi jihadis. Al-Qaeda is a Salafi jihadi movement. Salafism is Islam as Allah recited it, and jihadi means "through war," so it is a militant movement seeking an "originalist" form of Islam and willing to use force to get there. Salafism is often associated with the Wahhabi movement, an equally austere branch of Sunni Islam that arose in the early part of the eighteenth century. Wahhabis dominate Saudi Arabia, the paymaster and invisible hand behind many political machinations in the Middle East. In — Richard Engel

When students and liberals initially occupied Tahrir Square, it looked like it might be a passing thing. — Richard Engel

We know that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has some very dangerous, very important leaders who are tied directly to the top leadership of al Qaeda central, including a man who was formerly Osama bin Laden's secretary. — Richard Engel

War does horrible things to human beings, to societies. It brings out the best, but most often the worst, in our human nature. — Richard Engel

Egypt has a devout population. People go out, they pray, they fast. — Richard Engel

For decades, Saddam and his Sunni minority had imposed their will on Iraq, carrying on a 14-century tradition of Sunnis controlling Mesopotamia despite a Shiite majority. — Richard Engel

ISIS controls a territory roughly the size of Maryland where 8 million people live. If it's attacked and toppled, who will fill the void? — Richard Engel

If Israel sees weapons moving toward its border, it acts. — Richard Engel

War can be fun for certain people. It's a magnet for sadists, losers, and angry dreamers. — Richard Engel

We're all bloggers and punks and rebels with cameras. There is absolutely no respect for career journalists anymore. — Richard Engel

Hezbollah and the government are only two of 18 political factions in Lebanon, most of them armed. There are militant Christian groups, Palestinian radicals, al-Qaida, Druze militias and even armed bands of Marxists still operating in Lebanon. — Richard Engel

The U.S. invaded the wrong country, destroying an odious government that was not responsible for 9/11. I don't know how you recover from invading the wrong country, no matter how you spin it. — Richard Engel

Turkey wants to see Bashar al-Assad go and wants to kind of expand its sphere of influence into Turkey so its Ottoman glory or Ottoman past are once again project into the Syrian provinces. That's kind of what Turkey's vision is. — Richard Engel

Lebanon does not have a powerful army. — Richard Engel

Each day had the same bloody rhythm: mortars at dawn, car bombs by 11: 00 a.m., drive-by shootings before tea, and mortars again at dusk. At night the death squads went to work. — Richard Engel

For years, Lebanese have known that Palestinian camps like Nahr al-Barid and Ain al-Helwe - hopeless slums crowded with generations of disenfranchised Palestinian refugees who can't go home because of Israel, and can't work because of Lebanese laws - are awash with gunmen, criminals and, since the war in Iraq, al-Qaida inspired jihadists. — Richard Engel

Anyone who follows the Middle East and Islamic world in general can't deny it is often a very violent place, that a band of instability now stretches from Algeria to Pakistan. — Richard Engel

If you're in part of rebel-controlled Syria, and suddenly your house blows up or a building next to you blows up, it would be convenient for rebels to say, 'It was the Americans.' — Richard Engel

The Muslim Brotherhood, or 'the Brotherhood' for short, is an Islamic group founded in Egypt in 1928. It has been pursuing a secret campaign to take over the government since its creation. — Richard Engel

To be effective, demonstrators must pick the right square and make it the center of their activities. — Richard Engel

In 2015, when I went back to the States or to an international conference, I found that people didn't much care anymore. They saw the Middle East awash in blood, beyond redemption, and didn't want to read about it or see it on the evening news. They just wanted to keep away from it. — Richard Engel

Everything changed with the First World War. The Middle East was reorganized, redefined, and the seeds were planted for a century of bloodshed. — Richard Engel

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

the United States decided it was not going to intervene in Syria - at least for the time being. The Syrian opposition felt betrayed and abandoned. Worse, Syrians were now completely without hope, which is the most dangerous human condition. A man or woman with no hope is capable of anything. — Richard Engel

Every war has revolutionary justice. — Richard Engel

Foreign aid projects have pumped billions of dollars into the Afghan economy. — Richard Engel

It seems nothing good comes out of Abu Ghraib. — Richard Engel

Not surprisingly, in most Sunni regions there has little appetite for free U.S.-sponsored elections. — Richard Engel

The Taliban mostly attacks international and Afghan security forces. They rarely carry out attacks in markets. — Richard Engel

Hamas has long been Israel's enemy, but in the wake of the Arab Spring, the group is empowered like never before. — Richard Engel

Bhutto's regime is remembered for having one of the worst human rights records in Pakistan's history, and her government did not allow the media freedoms she criticizes Musharraf for crushing. — Richard Engel

Syrians need to prepare for the aftermath if the Assad regime falls. Atrocities that could be considered war crimes have been committed in this country, and Syrians should rightly demand that the perpetrators be held accountable. — Richard Engel

ISIS is in many ways a creation of the Syrian regime. — Richard Engel

Obviously it was happenstance, but it did change my opinion of human nature. I now saw war as a constant, akin to wildfires. They break out unless you work actively to prevent them. It's an atavistic thing, buried deep in our DNA. — Richard Engel

In 2009, Hamas was relatively new to power. It had won elections just three years earlier and was flexing its newfound strength via a war with its old enemy, Israel, which it officially wants destroyed. — Richard Engel