Noam Chomsky Quotes

Iraq and Afghanistan will, over time, become stable. But the War on Terror will continue long after Iraq and Afghanistan have had success in standing up their own governments.

For a generation, terrorists learned they could make war on free nations without fear of war in return. On September 12, the terrorists got war in return.

As we continue to make great progress in the war on terror, now more than ever, it is important that members of the international community stand-by and bolster the efforts of the emerging diplomatic leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Afghanistan and Iraq were lumped together in what was called a 'global war on terrorism.'

The war on terror is the war in Afghanistan.

We don't have a war on terror - that's a technique. We didn't have a war on blitzkriegs, and we didn't have a war on surprise attacks.

The Pakistani government under Musharraf is a strong and key player in the global war on terrorism, and their contribution has been second to none.

Pakistan is both an ally in the war on terror, and in some sense, a battleground of the war on terror.

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

But it then very soon became clear that the response of a war against terrorism, initially conceived of in a metaphorical sense, began to be taken increasingly seriously and came to entail waging a real war.

But the war on terror as I have repeatedly said in the past, and the Afghan people believe in it, in truth, is that the war on terror is not in the Afghan villages or homes. Its in the sanctuaries, it is in the training grounds, its in the motivation factors and the money that comes to it.

I think the key that happened on 9/11 is we went from considering terrorist attacks as a law enforcement problem to considering terrorist attacks, especially on the scale we have on 9/11, as being an act of war.

Yes, what has happened is we have moved from responding to these terrorist attacks as acts of civil disobedience to getting to the point after September 11 that we said, no, this is not just civil disobedience, this is an act of war.

We are at war with Al Qaeda and its affiliates.

… the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

We are in a war on terrorism. We need to conduct that war and take it to the terrorists, not here at home.

Any American who joins al Qaeda will know full well that they have joined an organization that is at war with the United States. Any American who did that should know well that they in fact are part of an enemy... and that the U.S. will do anything that is possible to destroy that enemy to save American lives.

The war on terror is a fight that we did not start, but it is one that we shall finish.

In fact, if you look upon the situation today, there is great division in the world and we have failed to capitalize on that unity to finish the job in Afghanistan and against al Qaeda.

To win the war on terror, we must know who our friends are and where our enemies are hiding. We can't continue fighting terrorism using the same foreign policy blueprints that were in place before September 11th.

It's very important to go back and keep in mind the distinction between handling these events as criminal acts, which was the way we did before 9/11, and then looking at 9/11 and saying, 'This is not a criminal act,' not when you destroy 16 acres of Manhattan, kill 3,000 Americans, blow a big hole in the Pentagon. That's an act of war.

The terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States - and war is what they got.

That's driven by any number of factors, the most prominent of which have been the combat experience of two major campaigns - one in Afghanistan and the other in Iraq - and the ongoing demands of the global war on terrorism.

America decided we were going to stand by and let Americans die at the hands of terrorists a long time ago.

To a degree, the West is reaping what it sowed from a major strategic blunder in the aftermath of 9/11 - the entire concept of a war on technique, that is, terrorism. Defining the enemy when fighting a concept was impossible.