Richard Engel Quotes

ISIS filled the vacuum in Iraq and Syria created by a lack of effective governance.

I don't want to be overly dramatic, but Iraq and Syria are gone, and they aren't coming back, at least not as centralized states.

If anything caused ISIS, it was the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

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

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.

The rise of ISIS is a result of - Obama and Clinton making a decision to pull our troops out without preparing Iraq is a colossal mistake.

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.

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.

The situation in Iraq is dangerous but the regional situation is also very complicated and precarious.

If Syria collapses completely, the United States and the world would have to consider who, and what, fills the vacuum.

ISIS is in many ways a creation of the Syrian regime.

Extremism in Syria cannot be contained within Syria.

Libya is a failed state and becoming a launching pad for external operations, as is Sinai in Egypt.

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.

The Sunni militants that make up ISIS are not the underlying problem in Syria and Iraq, but rather they are a symptom of other deeper problems.

As brutal as Saddam Hussein was, it was a mistake to just eliminate him. The same is true for Moammar Gadhafi and for Libya, which is now a failed state.

There is no question that what we are seeing - the horrible advance of ISIS - goes back, if you will, to the original sin of the invasion of Iraq.

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.

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.

What happened in Iraq and Syria was that the world remained silent as ISIS expanded.

I have long argued that ISIS and Assad are not separate problems to be chosen between, but are action and reaction, cause and symptom, chicken and egg: impossible to untangle no matter how much we might like to.

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.

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

If Sudan starts to crumble, the shock waves will spread.

The invasion of Iraq, particularly, gave a big shot in the arm to the jihadi extremists.