Jack Keane Quotes

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.

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.

Failed states have become breeding grounds for conflict.

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

As was true in Iraq and Libya, the United States has no credible government or leader able to bring order, security, and freedom to the people of Syria if Assad is overthrown.

Both sides in Syria are bad. One side is a brutal dictator, and the other includes Islamists and terrorists who are dangerous already and who would be brutal in power if given the chance.

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.

Syria cannot continue this way—killing their people

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.

Why is Assad more responsible for all the deaths in Syria than those fighting to overthrow and kill him?

Assad has to go. I mean, the way that ISIS can recruit, and the rebels that are in the north, and all the chaos that's happening through a lot of Syria circles around a lot of people that do not like Assad.

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

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.

Da'esh and Assad are not separate problems.

We warned when the crisis began in 2011 that unless it was resolved quickly, the country [Syria] would be destroyed. Unfortunately, our warnings are coming true.

Syria is descending into suicide. It's a horror story and getting worse and worse. There's no bright spot on the horizon. What will probably happen, if this continues, is that Syria will be partitioned into probably three regions; a Kurdish region - which is already forming - that could pull out and join in some fashion the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, maybe with some kind of deal with Turkey.

There is little doubt that an unstable Syria will destabilize the whole Middle East.

Hezbollah and the government are only two of 18 political factions in Lebanon, most of them armed. There are militant Christian groups, Palestinian radicals, al-Qaida, Druze militias and even armed bands of Marxists still operating in Lebanon.

The understanding of Syria's devastating civil war has been distorted by the immense danger and difficulty of covering it.

Violence has been Nicaragua's most important export to the world.

Once we destroyed the Saddam regime, we knew there was going to be a civil war.

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

Some leaders think time will solve the problem. Their hope is that Assad's regime will ultimately fall from the heavy toll of the horrors it has spawned. From past experience with such regimes, this scenario is unlikely to happen.

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