A biography for Richard Engelhasn’t been written yet.
“Rockets fired by the Taliban generally aren't guided.”
“If Israel sees weapons moving toward its border, it acts.”
“Iraq was home of the Abbasid Caliphate, a golden age when the Muslim world was at the forefront of math, science and medicine.”
“Initially, before the modern state of Iraq was created, there were three separate provinces here: a Shiite in the south, a largely Sunni one in the middle, and a Kurdish one in the north.”
“For many foreign fighters, the jihad in Iraq and Syria is a commuter war.”
“Foreign aid projects have pumped billions of dollars into the Afghan economy.”
“There weren't many weapons in Egypt in the 1990s. Police controls on guns were very strict back then. That is no longer the case in Egypt today.”
“On one level, bombing ISIS is easy. The U.S. knows where the group operates. There's no need for a ten-year hunt like the one for Osama bin Laden. The terror group has two capital cities: Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. Al-Qaeda never had such an obvious home address.”
“Ethnically, Tuareg describe themselves as white. And they don't look Arab or black. Many Tuareg have light skin, light eyes and sharp angular noses and cheekbones. They are cousins of the Berbers of North Africa. Some legends say the Tuareg are the decedents of an ancient Roman legion that disappeared into the desert two millennia ago.”
“Egypt has a presidential system. The president runs the state. Who the president is matters profoundly.”
“For eight years, you had the Bush administration with a very interventionist policy, driving into world affairs, driving primarily into the Islamic world, army first or fist first.”
“If you're in part of rebel-controlled Syria, and suddenly your house blows up or a building next to you blows up, it would be convenient for rebels to say, 'It was the Americans.'”
“We're all bloggers and punks and rebels with cameras. There is absolutely no respect for career journalists anymore.”
“You gotta love the names. They're so eager, earnest, and hopeful: Camp Prosperity, Camp Liberty, and Camp Victory are the names of just a few of the U.S. military bases in Baghdad.”
“Not surprisingly, in most Sunni regions there has little appetite for free U.S.-sponsored elections.”
“There are many Israelis who are not keen on Barack Obama - they did not want to see him elected.”
“The Muslim Brotherhood is much more hardline than Turkish Islamists.”
“9/11 was a terrible, horrific, tragic day.”
“Turkey wants to see Bashar al-Assad go and wants to kind of expand its sphere of influence into Turkey so its Ottoman glory or Ottoman past are once again project into the Syrian provinces. That's kind of what Turkey's vision is.”
“Obviously it was happenstance, but it did change my opinion of human nature. I now saw war as a constant, akin to wildfires. They break out unless you work actively to prevent them. It’s an atavistic thing, buried deep in our DNA.”