Peter Bergen Quotes

For an organization devoted to revolutionary holy war, the pre-9/11 al-Qaeda sometimes had the feel of an insurance company, albeit a heavily armed one.

Negotiations with religious fanatics who have delusions of grandeur generally do not go well.

The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think it’s accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.

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.

Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster, for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. —Friedrich Nietzsche

The most deadly jihadist attacks in the United States since 9/11, and the most threatening plots, have been carried out by or instigated by Americans.

alphabet, and G meant that bin Laden was “secured.” McRaven relayed the word Geronimo to the White House. But this was ambiguous: Was bin Laden captured or dead? So McRaven asked the SEAL ground force commander, “Is he EKIA [Enemy Killed in Action]?” A few seconds later, the answer came back: “Roger, Geronimo EKIA.” Then McRaven announced to the White House, “Geronimo EKIA.” There were gasps in the Situation Room, but no whoops or high fives. The president quietly said, “We got him, we got him.” It was still the middle of the night in Pakistan, and the SEALs were able to see only through the murky, pixilated

Obama would prove to be one of the most militarily aggressive American presidents in decades. He authorized military operations in seven Muslim countries—Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen; mandated a troop surge in Afghanistan; and vastly ramped up the CIA drone program. And he became the first president since the Civil War to authorize the assassination of a U.S. citizen: Anwar al-Awlaki.

Some kind of personal crisis (the loss of a job, the experience of racism, moral outrage caused by the way Muslims were being treated in international conflicts, or the death of a close family member) provided a “cognitive opening” for a turn to Salafi beliefs,

Only the government could have made a ‘terrorist’ out of Mr. Cromitie, whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in scope….I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that there would have been no crime here except the government instigated it, planned it and brought it to fruition.” Nonetheless,

When told the capital of South Korea, Seoul, was so close to the North Korean border that millions of people would likely die in the first hours of any all-out war, Trump had a bold response, "They have to move." The officials in the oval office weren't sure if he was joking. He raised his voice. "They have to move!

It also imposed Taliban-style rule (a draconian implementation of sharia, or Koranic, law that has involved throwing homosexuals to their deaths from tall buildings, lopping off the hands of thieves, beheading women accused of “sorcery,” and enslaving and raping minority women) over some eight million Syrians and Iraqis. Within

Bin Laden was eager to memorialize the 9/11 attacks with another spectacular one. He told his deputies that killing President Barack Obama was a high priority, but he also had General David Petraeus, the then-commander in Afghanistan, in his sights. Bin Laden told his team not to bother with plots against Vice President Joe Biden, whom he considered “totally unprepared” for the post of president.

In fact, the poor are generally too busy making ends meet to be the vanguard of any revolution. History shows that terrorism is a largely bourgeois endeavor, from the Russian anarchists of the late nineteenth century to the German Marxists of the Baader-Meinhof Gang of the 1970s, to the apocalyptic Japanese terror cult Aum Shinrikyo of the 1990s. Islamist terrorists, it turns out, are no different.

On the choppers were twenty-three SEALs and a Pakistani-American who spoke the local language, Pashto. If crowds gathered at the Abbottabad compound, he would tell people there was a Pakistani military exercise going on and they should go home. Also on the flight to Abbottabad was a dog named Cairo, who would prevent “squirters” from sneaking out of the compound, sniff out any explosives, and hunt for possible safe rooms.

Matthew’s case underlines a surprising fact: since 9/11 the FBI has organized more jihadist terrorist plots in the United States than any other organization. Al-Qaeda’s core group in Pakistan has mounted six terrorist plots (of varying degrees of sophistication); al-Qaeda’s branch in Yemen has mounted two; the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate have each mounted one. Three other plots were engineered by the NYPD. The FBI has been responsible for thirty.

media,

For years before the September 11th attacks, bin Laden told the world precisely what his grievances were, what he would do about them and how he expected his plan to work. As he told Robert Fisk of the Independent, Peter Bergen and Peter Arnett of CNN, Abdel Bari Atwan of the newspaper Al Quds al-Arabi in London and others, his problem was U.S. military intervention in the Middle East. His plan was to wage war against the United States to force our military out of the region, thus making it possible to achieve al Qaeda’s long-term goals of carrying out revolutions in their own countries without American interference. John Miller, an ABC

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.” – Charlie McCarthy (Edgar Bergen)

The accused were: Joseph Kramer, Dr. Fritz Klein, Peter Weingartner, Georg Kraft, Franz Hoessler, Juana Borman, Elizabeth Volkenrath, Herta Ehlert, Irma Grese, Ilse Lothe, Hilde Lobauer, Josef Klippel, Oscar Schmitz, Karl Francioh, Fritz Mathes, Otto Calesson, Medislaw Burgraf, Karl Egersdorf, Anchor Pichen, Walter Otto, Franz Stofel, Heinrich Schreirer, Wilhelm Dorr, Eric Barsch, Erich Zoddel, Ignatz Schlomowicz, Vladislav Ostrowski, Antoni Aurdzieg, Ilse Forster, Ida Forster, Klara Opitz, Charlotte Klein, Herta Bothe, Frieda Waiter, Irene Haschke, Gertrud Fiest, Gertrud Sauer, Hilda Lisiewitz, Johanne Roth, Anna Hempel, Hildegard Hahnel, Helena Kopper, Antoni Polanski, Stanislawa Starotska and Ladislaw Gura.

We are misled in a second way, by a well-intentioned but dishonest campaign to deny the Islamic State’s medieval religious nature. Peter Bergen, who produced the first interview with bin Laden in 1997, titled his first book Holy War, Inc. in part to acknowledge bin Laden as a creature of the modern secular world. Bin Laden corporatized terror and franchised it out. He requested specific political concessions, such as the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Saudi Arabia. His foot soldiers navigated the modern world confidently. On Mohammad Atta’s last full day of life, he shopped at Walmart and ate dinner at Pizza Hut.

The examples of Trump’s irrational and often deeply strained relationship with the Pentagon are abundant. In Trump and His Generals: The Cost of Chaos, Peter Bergen cites many. For example: “When told the capital of South Korea, Seoul, was so close to the North Korean border that millions of people would likely die in the first hours of any all-out war, Trump had a bold response, ‘They have to move.

Abdullah,

According to Harris, Dawkins and other prominent neoatheists (Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett round out the self-styled “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”), science education is a natural antidote to sacred terror. But independent studies by Oxford sociologist Diego Gambetta, forensic psychiatrist Marc Sageman, and journalist and political scientist Peter Bergen indicate that a majority of al-Qaeda members and associates went to college, that the college education was mostly science oriented, and that engineer and medical doctor are the professions most represented in al-Qaeda. Much the same has been true for Hamas.

We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm. —ATTRIBUTED TO WINSTON CHURCHILL

since 9/11 the FBI has instigated more jihadist terrorist “plots” in the States than al-Qaeda or any of its affiliated groups—thirty versus ten. Undercover

Even as the war began to go badly and others sought ways to put a better face on their activities, Eichmann adamantly opposed the deals with outsiders, supported by some of his more pragmatic colleagues, in which Jewish lives were to be bartered for desperately needed trucks or clothing. It thus came as a considerable surprise to his colleagues when in late 1944 he finally relented, agreeing to the departure of seventeen hundred Hungarian Jews for Spain. But, hardly for the first time, others had underestimated the man. At the last minute the train was diverted to Bergen-Belsen.