Quotes & Sayings About Insurgency

But most of all, Schneider shows us that it was Lawrence's extraordinary empathy that enabled his achievements. This ability to identify with others, to grasp their hopes and fears and understanding of events about them, was key in the sort of campaign he conducted. "In an insurgency, empathy plays an especially crucial role," Schneider writes. "It places the leader inside the hearts and minds of his own men." In an interesting aside, Schneider also observes that it enabled Lawrence to understand his superior, General Edmund Allenby. — James Schneider

It should be noted that even if the high-end estimate of fatalities directly or indirectly attributed to the Boko Haram insurgency were accepted at face value, they would still represent a small percentage of the overall violent deaths that have occurred in Nigeria over that same period of time.... According to UNODC data, Nigeria had 18,422 intentional homicides in 2008, the year after the violently contested elections.... Based on those numbers remaining relatively constant, Boko Haram would constitute approximately 5 per cent of all violent deaths in Nigeria since their peak in fatalities in 2009. — Zacharias Pieri

You can't kill your way to success in a counter insurgency effort. You have to protect the people, get the civil military balance right, train the locals, and practice effective strategic communications. — James G. Stavridis

Constructive insurgency: Is the use of legal and imaginative means of resistance to reform a system of repression. Generally through the use of a non-violent nature. — Clyde Lewis

The simple and terrifying reality, forbidden from discussion in America, was that despite spending $600 billion a year on the military, despite having the best fighting force the world had ever known, they were getting their asses kicked by illiterate peasants who made bombs out of manure and wood. — Michael Hastings

Military operations alone cannot defeat an insurgency because only economic development and political action can address most sources of disaffection. If military operations are not conducted consistent with political objectives or occur without economic development, they are certain to alienate the population further, reduce the amount of intelligence available to [...] security forces, and strengthen rather than weaken the enemy. — H.R. McMaster

Poetry is difficult, I mean interesting poetry, not confessional babble or emotive propaganda. Reading a new poet is discovering an entire world, what Stevens called a 'mundo' and it takes a lot of time to orientate oneself in such a world. What we have to learn to do then, as teachers and militants of a poetic insurgency, is to encourage people to learn to love the difficulty of poetry. I simply do not understand much of the poetry that I love. — Simon Critchley

The Government of Iraq also owes a debt to the American and coalition forces who are fighting the insurgency and helping put that country back together after decades of repression. — Ike Skelton

Our aim is always to minimise casualties and to separate a hardline Taliban from those who have been caught up in the insurgency. — Bob Ainsworth

The presence of American troops is fueling the insurgency in Iraq, as acknowledged by General Casey and numerous other experts, and is helping terrorist recruiters build their numbers across the globe. — John Conyers

[In response to the question "Do you think that you underestimated the insurgency's strength?"] I think so. I guess if I look back on it now, I don't think anybody anticipated the level of violence that we've encountered. — Dick Cheney

The Mizo insurgency was in full swing. The Mizo Hills were originally called the Lushai Hills, lushai meaning long head. We were fortunate in having Ajit Doval, a young Intelligence Bureau (IB) officer. Doval was a livewire and had guts, venturing in disguise into territory controlled by the hostiles. — J.F.R. Jacob

Kennedy saw the insurgency as a anti-colonial, essentially nationalist movement, feeding on social discontent. So you don't shoot people. — Roger Hilsman

The administration needs to speak honestly with the American people. Exaggerating our progress in defeating the insurgency or in creating an Iraqi army paints a dangerous picture. — Sherrod Brown

Both parties have moved to the right during the neoliberal period of the past generation. Mainstream Democrats are now pretty much what used to be called "moderate Republicans." Meanwhile, the Republican Party has largely drifted off the spectrum, becoming what respected conservative political analyst Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein call a "radical insurgency" that has virtually abandoned normal parliamentary politics. With — Noam Chomsky

The Syrian regime is helping the insurgency in Iraq and allowing all kinds of militants to come in and out, and go to Iraq to attack random soldiers and innocent people. — Walid Jumblatt

I never call it an insurgency. I call it terrorism. — Hamid Karzai

In a country like Iraq with its culture of blood feuds - is that the more locals are killed, the more motivation there is for the insurgency, for the insurgents the more feelings of revenge there are, and in the end the more the operational security of the soldiers suffers, because any soldier who kills an infant today is grooming the killer of his mate tomorrow. — Yaroslav Trofimov

In any insurgency there will be people who are irreconcilable and who pose a clear and present threat to the U.S. and our allies. — James G. Stavridis

The public's continuing ambivalence about cultural matters is all the more striking given that the political conversation on these issues has for 30 years been dominated by an aggressive, radical right-wing insurgency that has achieved an influence far out of proportion to its numbers. Its potent secret weapon has been the guilt and anxiety about desire that inform the character of Americans regardless of ideology; appealing to those largely unconscious emotions, the right has disarmed, intimidated, paralyzed its opposition. — Ellen Willis

I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency. — Dick Cheney

We had won the war, but when the insurgency reared its ugly head, we lost everything we had gained. — Kenneth Eade

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

But the key shift in focus will be from counter-insurgency operations to more and more cooperation with Iraqi security forces and to building Iraqi security capacity. — John Abizaid

There was a belief after World War I that painting could be an act of civil revolt. I want this exhibition, 'New Museum,' to be an act of civil disobedience. It's not so much about the New Museum on the Bowery, but the idea of challenging museums as projections of cultural authority. It's painting as insurgency. — Richard Phillips

We must support initiatives that provide clear, concrete measures and milestones that our troops need for defeating the insurgency, building up Iraqi security forces, and handing over Iraq to the Iraqi people. — Sherrod Brown

Almost all Iraqis with any previous experience in the intelligence business are Sunni Arab, increasing the risk of penetration of the new intelligence apparatus by the insurgency. — Wayne White

Rather than bring peace and harmony, the EU will cause insurgency and violence. — Nigel Farage

But what counter-insurgency really comes down to is the protection of the capitalists back in America, their property and their privileges. U.S. national security, as preached by U.S. leaders, is the security of the capitalist class in the US, not the security of the rest of the people. — Philip Agee

I don't know how you defeat an insurgency unless you have some handle on the number of people you are facing. — John McCain

The number of attacks on the American and allied forces is at the highest level since the insurgency began despite the increase of America combat operations and the introduction of some 40 new Iraq security forces and battalions. — Ike Skelton

The most stupid mistake a counter-insurgency operation can make is alienating the population. If you alienate the population, you're finished. — Meles Zenawi

I think the central mission in Afghanistan right now is to protect the people, certainly, and that would be inclusive of everybody, and that in a, in an insurgency and a counterinsurgency, that's really the center of gravity. — Michael Mullen

We are tangled in a very significant Islamic insurgency in Iraq. — Michael Scheuer

Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003, Hussein and his regime were brought down, we declared "Mission Accomplished" and celebrated victory ... and chaos erupted. We did not assert control and authority over the country, especially Baghdad. We did not bring with us the capacity to impose our will. We did not take charge. And Iraq did not in a few weeks magically transform itself into a stable nation with democratic leaders. Instead a raging insurgency engulfed the country. — Colin Powell

Superior might does not guarantee success, especially in a war where political considerations dominate. — Richard H. Shultz Jr.

And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person's entire processes. And these Taliban - I'm not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that's not what we're saying. I'm saying an example of how you go about [sic] is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with. — Pete Sessions

We'd be better off if the whole purpose of the adventure in Iraq was, say, to protect Israel or to protect the flow of oil to America and keep it at a reasonable price and try to get some more control. If it was about oil, going into Iraq, I guess, could have made sense. But at a certain point, when the insurgency began and we were in real trouble, there would have been some awareness that we were going to jeopardize the oil. — Seymour Hersh

Now that our troops are mired in a dangerous effort to defeat the insurgency and are also trying to help rebuild the country, Americans of all political persuasions simply want the United States to succeed and our troops to be as safe as possible. — Harry Reid

But the heart weakens without democracy, and there was no democracy within the Tigers. They antagonized their own brothers by killing them. — Samanth Subramanian

Iraq was already in the grip of a bloody insurgency against British rule. Churchill therefore called a conference in Cairo to hand over a certain amount of power to Arab rulers under British influence. — Simon Sebag Montefiore

What's happened is that an incessant, an insidious insurgency has repeatedly attacked the key infrastructure targets, reducing outputs. — Stuart Bowen

I am encouraged by the news today that United States special operations personnel found, identified and killed the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the operational commander of the al-Qaeda led insurgency in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi was the public face of the insurgency. — Mike Fitzpatrick

One of the most ignored dimensions of the Iraqi insurgency are the Iraqis themselves who are regularly abducted, held for ransom and sometimes executed. — Bruce Hoffman

The US is often the first to call for transparency and integrity in the reporting of other governments. It has never provided transparency or integrity in its reporting on the war in Iraq. It has downplayed the growth of the insurgency and other civil conflicts. It exaggerated progress in the development of Iraqi forces, and has reported meaningless macroecomic figures claiming 'progress' in the face of steadily deteriorating economic conditions for most Iraqis outside the Kurdish security zone, and does so in the face of almost incredible incompetence by USAID and the Corps of Engineers. — Anthony H. Cordesman

The war in Afghanistan is too important to be reduced to a political football. We are fighting there to protect our national security. We are confronting the Taliban-led insurgency to prevent terrorists returning to that country. — Bob Ainsworth

If we want to build the Iraqis' confidence about our intentions in their country, if we want to stop adding fuel to the fire of insurgency and terrorism, we must clarify our intent. — John Conyers

We remember the grind of the insurgency
the roadside bombs, the sniper fire, the suicide attacks. From the 'triangle of death' to the fight for Ramadi; from Mosul in the north to Basra in the south
your will proved stronger than the terror of those who tried to break it. — Barack Obama

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

Three years into the war, tens of thousands of American troops remain targets of a growing Iraqi insurgency. — Jan Schakowsky

These others
the overwhelming majority of Iraq's people
have repeatedly given every indication of valuing their newfound freedom: voting in two elections at the risk of their lives, preparing for a third, writing and ratifying a constitution granting more freedoms than exist in any country in the entire Arab Middle East. The secret is out, There is something decent unfolding in Iraq. It's unfolding in the shadow of a terrible insurgency, but a society is finding its way to constitutional politics. — Fouad Ajami

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

For the past decade, U.S. generals have dominated the military effort against the insurgency. Washington has chosen Afghanistan's leaders. Americans have conceived, planned, financed, and overseen economic projects in which Afghans have played only supporting roles. And yet there has never been a possibility that the United States and its allies could win the war against the Taliban. Only Afghans themselves can do that. — Anonymous

All former counter-insurgency officers categorically denied having perpetrated torture during the Terror. In the case of at least one such research participant, anecdotal evidence from mutual contacts suggested otherwise. It is impossible to tell who, if any, of the former counter-insurgency officers featured in this chapter perpetrated torture during the Bheeshanaya. Eliciting confessions is not the aim of this book. My interest lies, instead, in exploring the ways in which 'perpetrators' of violence remember and reconstruct their disturbing pasts, and how they come to terms with it in the present. — Dhana Hughes

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]. — Yaroslav Trofimov

The government of Pakistan is yet to understand that the insurgency is not the disease but the symptoms of the disease. If the government really needs to cure the crisis in the area, then it must engage in genuine treatment procedure rather than engage in ad hoc solutions that go under the motto: picked up, killed, and dumped. Kidnapping the target and dumping his or her bullet riddled and tortured corpse in a public place to scare the people in the area is a military strategy which aims to provide a lesson to those who still retain seeds of resistance. If this is the only solution that the government is capable of then it will have to commit genocide against the people of Balochistan so that it can continue to steal their natural resources and have total control of the province. — Nilantha Ilangamuwa

An insurgency doesn't have to win. It just has to survive. — Mark Owen

Its the reality of a situation like this that when you have a large troop presence that it has the tendency to fuel the insurgency, because they can make the incorrect and unfair claim that somehow the United States is here to occupy this country, which of course is not true. — Russ Feingold

Almost immediately, I remember right when Tikrit even fell, a few days after Baghdad fell, there was talks of insurgency, there was talks of jihad and of resisting the American occupiers, and slowly this turned into an organized movement. — Farnaz Fassihi

With no other security forces on hand, U.S. military was left to confront, almost alone, an Iraqi insurgency and a crime rate that grew worse throughout the year, waged in part by soldiers of the disbanded army and in part by criminals who were released from prison. — John Spratt

Our military should spare no expense to ensure the safety of our troops, particularly as they confront a hostile insurgency and roadside bombs throughout Iraq. — Christopher Dodd

So the insurgency was born in a perfect storm of American errors--not establishing order; not providing the semblance of any government; confirming to the Sunnis who had once lorded it over Iraq's Shia majority that they were officially the underdogs; and throwing hundreds of thousands of soldiers onto the streets in an economy where the jobless rate was around 50 percent, while simultaneously ensuring that there was an unlimited supply of weaponry at hand for those angry young men. — Peter Bergen

We must clean our national psyche from all manifestation of evil, be it kidnapping, militancy, insurgency, murders or assassinations. — Sunday Adelaja