Richard Engel Quotes

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.

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.

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

I don’t look for good-news stories or bad-news stories.

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.’

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.

A lot of Iran‘s empowerment is a result of the war in Iraq.

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

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

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.

Initially, before the modern state of Iraq was created, there were three separate provinces here: a Shiite in the south, a largely Sunni one in the middle, and a Kurdish one in the north.

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

Fences and walls can be effective and even soothing, at least for those who build them.

The U.S. presence and American missteps made ethnic violence in Iraq far worse than it would have been otherwise after Saddam Saddam Hussein‘s fall.

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.

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

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

Putin believes Russia is back, and he may be right.

I think the Chinese model is one that appeals more and more in the developing world. People see that an authoritarian state can hold onto power, can hold on to stability and can drive the economy forward.

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.

Assad’s regime helped ISIS grow by attacking other opposition forces and rarely targeting ISIS.

The Muslim Brotherhood is a fundamentalist group.

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.

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

By 2007, Iraqi society had completely collapsed.

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

Every war has revolutionary justice.

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.

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

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

Every country where the the United States maintains troops has a status of forces agreement.

Israel sees the world just beyond its borders collapsing.

Some Iraqi troops aren’t willing to fight for their government. But many Shiites appear willing to fight for their religious leaders.

Iraq was home of the Abbasid Caliphate, a golden age when the Muslim world was at the forefront of math, science and medicine.

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?

Under a decades-old agreement, Palestinian refugee camps are supposed to administer and police themselves. Lebanese troops are technically not allowed to enter them.

The Sahara is Africa‘s great divide.

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

The Syrians are better suited to sort out their internal divisions than anyone else.

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

I’m basically a pacifist.

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.

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

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

It’s probably time to end the global war on terrorism.

We’re all bloggers and punks and rebels with cameras. There is absolutely no respect for career journalists anymore.

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

I have seen heroics – soldiers saving other soldiers’ lives – and horrors.

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.

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.

Hamas is a Palestinian political party with an aggressive militant wing.