James Lankford Quotes

I've been calling for the support of the Syrian rebels for years.

If Assad continues to conduct strikes against the Free Syrian Army at will, it would be very difficult for them to have any success against ISIS.

We don't see a peaceful Syria with Assad in there.

Like a nuclear disaster, the fallout from the meltdown of Syria threatens to be with us for decades, and the longer it is permitted to continue, the more severe the damage will be.

We've got a very difficult situation created by this embrace of the so-called Arab Spring. And that's not getting better. It's getting worse. The carnage for the people of Syria is horrific, and it's quite frankly too little, too late to reverse a lot of that.

A majority of the Syrian people believe in the regime and support Bashar al-Assad.

Syria: It’s a messy civil war and we should not be involved in it.

As the crisis in Syria grows and the humanitarian tragedy becomes more clear, I appreciated Prime Minister Netanyahu's perspective on the changes and volatility in the region.

Beyond Iraq, I am also profoundly worried about the continuing meltdown of Syria, which is a geopolitical Chernobyl. Until it is capped, it is going to continue to spew radioactive instability and extremist ideology over the entire region.

To destroy the Islamic State, you have to fix Syria. You have to look at the reasons that created the Islamic State. This is a huge task.

There are still plenty of fighting forces inside of Syria who want to see Assad go. We should have been helping them from the very beginning.

It's difficult to see how Syria can have any long-term future with Assad there as president. Many people would never return to that country if that were the case.

The central problem in Syria is that Sunni Arabs will not be willing partners against the Islamic State unless we commit to protect them and the broader Syrian population against all enemies, not just ISIS.

It was wrenching to read about the brutality of Assad every morning, to see images of family homes reduced to rubble. I felt we had to do something in Syria.

I think we can all agree [Bashar] Assad is a bad and evil actor, but I'm not so sure that we want the Islamic rebels to be in charge of Syria either.

The fate of Syria hangs in the balance, but it is entirely possible that the fall of the Assad regime will result in anarchy and cause Syria to turn into a second Afghanistan, a base for anti-Israel terrorism.

It is always an eerie experience to sit among Bashar al-Assad's soldiers.

Unless there is meaningful change in Syria and an end to the crackdown, President Assad and those around him will find themselves isolated internationally and discredited within Syria.

Syria cannot continue this way—killing their people

Extremism in Syria cannot be contained within Syria.

Just when we think it cannot get any worse, the bar of [Syrian] depravity sinks lower.

The United States should propose partition in Syria. Assad can keep what he controls, and the rebels can form local governments and establish a new entity.

We have no vital national interest in Syria's civil war.

The regime of Bashar al-Assad will inevitably go down. And its collapse will be loud not only in Syria but across the Arab world.

What the United States needs to do at this point is reaffirm our commitment that Assad must go and that Iran and Russia cannot be granted a sphere of influence in Syria, and that we will not sit down at the negotiating table to help broker Assad's victory in this fight.