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

If night raids and detentions are an unavoidable part of modern counterinsurgency warfare, then so is the resentment they breed.

Anand Gopal

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 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

As the insurgency in Iraq started to grow, we realized this is a connected network of individual actors that can move at light speed.

Chris Fussell

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

Well, the oil, the oil spot, if you will, is a, is a term in counterinsurgency literature that connotes a peaceful area, secure area. So what you're trying to do is to always extend that, to push that out.

David Petraeus

The word 'insurgency' had connotations that really sent a shiver down the spine of folks in Washington, in the United States - for good reason, because it means this is something much bigger than just a few terrorist cells.

David Petraeus

Counter-insurgency, as you know, is a roller-coaster affair.

David Petraeus

The Pakistani Army, the Frontier Corps, the Frontier Scouts and Police have carried out quite impressive counter-insurgency operations.

David Petraeus

We cannot kill or capture our way out of an industrial-strength insurgency.

David Petraeus

The Germans have done wonderful work. Not long ago, a German battle group battalion conducted a very impressive counterinsurgency operation in a portion of Baghlan province. I think these are the first counterinsurgency operations conducted by any German element after World War II. And they did a very impressive job.

David Petraeus

In counterinsurgency operations, the human terrain is the decisive terrain.

David Petraeus

The overriding goal of counterinsurgency is to make friends: You make friends with the people; you isolate the insurgents.

Dexter Filkins

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

We don't know if our economy, our society, could support the social and the human and the economic cost of an insurgency.

Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada

Defenders of Wilson are correct to beg for context when considering his legacy. But it is they who ignore the context: the role Wilson played in using war, including Haiti's racist counterinsurgency, to nationalize white supremacy, militarism, and Christian evangelism.

Greg Grandin

Offensive operations and hunting down the enemy is an integral part of any counterinsurgency approach.

H. R. McMaster

I never call it an insurgency. I call it terrorism.

Hamid Karzai

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

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