Oliver North Quotes

The deplorable Syrian refugee crisis was created because Syrian President Bashar al-Assad started a war on his people, and the international community refused to confront him.

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.

Syria has become the great tragedy of the century—a disgraceful humanitarian calamity with suffering and displacement unparalleled in recent history.

Syria cannot continue this way—killing their people

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.

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.

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

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.

I think that's the main threat in Bosnia and Rwanda and Zaire. There doesn't seem to be much willingness to engage these problems unless they directly affect national security interests.

Civil wars tend to spread to neighboring countries. That’s what history shows.

Extremism in Syria cannot be contained within Syria.

Failed states are mainly a threat to their own inhabitants. We should help them anyway.

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

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.

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.

I am absolutely not saying that Milosevic might not be responsible for all sorts of atrocities, but I believe that what's been left out of public debate and the press is that there was a civil war going on there.

I strongly supported the war against Houthi rebels because I saw them as the antithesis of the Arab Spring that my government, unlike me, fiercely opposed.

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

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.

I can't discuss the possibility of the U.S. involvement in Syria's civil war without also talking about Benghazi.

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.

Wars are getting longer, they are more complex, and the humanitarian need is great.

We have to stop the killing. We need to let the refugees - we need to let Syrian citizens go home.