More than a decade and half after 9/11, U.S. military actions in countries such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan and several other Muslim nations are governed by the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that was passed in the days immediately after 9/11. Peter Bergen Read Quote
Bannon should never have had a permanent seat on the NSC, as he is a political operative, and the NSC has traditionally been a place where American interests are considered rather than narrow Republican or Democratic interests. Peter Bergen Read Quote
The senior director at the NSC for the Middle East is retired Col. Derek Harvey, an Arabic-speaking intelligence officer with a Ph.D. who served as the head of the U.S. military cell examining the insurgency in Iraq in 2003. Peter Bergen Read Quote
Imprisoned by its war on terror framework, the Bush administration supported Israel in a disastrous war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in the summer of 2006. Peter Bergen Read Quote
The dirty little secret of the intelligence world is that much of what you really need to know isn’t exactly a secret anyway. Peter Bergen Read Quote
The less the ISIS ‘caliphate’ exists as a physical entity, the less the group can claim it is the ‘Islamic State’ that it purports to be. Peter Bergen Read Quote
Nothing is more powerful than hearing from former members of the group that ISIS is not creating an Islamist utopia in the areas it controls, but a hell on earth. Peter Bergen Read Quote
It’s hard to imagine any Muslim fessing up to their secret proclivity for Sharia law knowing they would be deported if they gave the wrong answer. Peter Bergen Read Quote
In picking Gen. Jim Mattis for Defense secretary, President-elect Donald Trump has said that he found his ‘Gen. George Patton.’ Yet that label may not really capture what makes Mattis a distinctive choice. Peter Bergen Read Quote
Mattis has been sharply critical of President Barack Obama’s policies on Iran and Obama’s capping of troop numbers and campaign end-dates in theaters of war such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Mattis also appears to be a skeptic of the Obama-era policy of putting women into combat roles. Peter Bergen Read Quote
