Quotes by Dexter Filkins - Page 1

The overriding goal of counterinsurgency is to make friends: You make friends with the people; you isolate the insurgents.
Dexter Filkins / Journalist
Isolate
Overriding
Copy Quote
Let me just say, I think there's a reasonable criticism to be made of the Obama administration on the way that it left Iraq.
Dexter Filkins / Journalist
Administration
Criticism
Reasonable
Obama Administration
Copy Quote
It's so jarring to go from Baghdad to Cambridge, to go from a place where people are fighting and striving and dying to a place where the biggest concern is what kind of cheese to put in your sandwich.
Dexter Filkins / Journalist
Baghdad
Cambridge
Cheese
Concern
Dying
Fighting
Jarring
Striving
Sandwich
Copy Quote
Any American who has spent time in Iraq or Afghanistan will tell you: the closer you get, the less certain you are of anything. If you are in Iraq, if you are in Afghanistan, everything is ambiguous. Everything is murky and gray and uncertain and possibly lethal.
Dexter Filkins / Journalist
Afghanistan
Ambiguous
Gray
Uncertain
Time Will American
Closer
Lethal
Murky
Possibly
Spent
Copy Quote
The American surge of combat forces into Baghdad that was ordered by President Bush worked. And there was a calm, a relative calm that descended on the country kind of late 2008. That pretty much held until the last American combat soldiers left at the end of 2011.
Dexter Filkins / Journalist
Baghdad
Calm
Combat
Late
President
President Bush
Relative
Surge
Bush
Descended
Forces
Held
Ordered
Soldiers
Worked
Copy Quote
In war, people find themselves in extraordinary circumstances, and in those circumstances, they act in extraordinary ways. In war, you see people at their very best and their very worst, acting in ways you could never imagine. War is human drama at its most epic and most intense.
Dexter Filkins / Journalist
Circumstances
Epic
Extraordinary
Intense
Extraordinary Circumstances
Copy Quote
The whole kind of post-World War I settlement that formed the modern Middle East is in danger of collapsing, and we can - we, the United States, you know, the preeminent power in the world - we can say that we want to ignore that, but how long can we avert our gaze? And how long can we stay out?
Dexter Filkins / Journalist
Avert
Danger
East
Middle East
Settlement
World War I
War Power World
Collapsing
Formed
Gaze
Ignore
World War
Copy Quote
The expectation in the Obama Administration, or at least the hope, is that a nuclear deal with the West could ultimately moderate Iranian behavior by helping to integrate the country more thoroughly into the international system. Will this happen? It's impossible to predict, of course. We will only know if we get there.
Dexter Filkins / Journalist
Administration
Helping
Nuclear
Predict
Expectation
Integrate
Moderate
Obama Administration
Thoroughly
Copy Quote
It is one of the great ironies of the American war in Iraq - was that the guys who really got the most out of it were the Iranians. And they have us to thank for that. Yeah, I mean we basically put Maliki in power in 2006, but he has been - he's really not a friend of the United States. He's a friend of the Iranian regime.
Dexter Filkins / Journalist
War Power Great
Iranian Regime
Thank
Copy Quote
I think - I think the real nightmare place now is less Afghanistan than it is Pakistan. I mean, again, Pakistan is this gigantic country, deeply troubled, kind of almost ungovernable, sitting on top of probably 50 or 60 nuclear warheads. Nobody really knows where the warheads are; the Americans certainly don't know where they are.
Dexter Filkins / Journalist
Afghanistan
Nightmare
Nuclear
Pakistan
Gigantic
Nuclear Warheads
Troubled
Copy Quote
The most basic barrier was language itself, very few Americans in Iraq whether soldiers or diplomats or news paper reporters could speak more than a few words of Arabic. A remarkable number of them didn't even have translators. That meant for many Iraqis the typical 19 year old army corporal from South Dakota was not a youthful innocent carrying Americas good will, he was a terrifying combination of firepower and ignorance.
Dexter Filkins / Journalist
Army
Ignorance
Years
Copy Quote

Related Journalist Authors

Zoë Heller
Journalist
Wednesday, Jul 07, 1965
Yvan Audouard
Journalist
Friday, Feb 27, 1914
Sunday, Mar 21, 2004
Yuri Bezmenov
Journalist
Yoshiko Sakurai
Journalist
Wednesday, Oct 10, 1945
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
Journalist
Saturday, Dec 10, 1949
Yang Lan
Journalist
Sunday, Mar 31, 1968
Yahtzee Croshaw
Journalist
Tuesday, May 24, 1983
Xinran
Journalist
Ximenes Doudan
Journalist
Wynford Vaughan-Thomas
Journalist
Saturday, Aug 15, 1908
Wednesday, Feb 04, 1987
Wolf Blitzer
Journalist
Monday, Mar 22, 1948
William Seabrook
Journalist
Friday, Feb 22, 1884
Thursday, Sep 20, 1945
William Robertson Nicoll
Journalist
Friday, Oct 10, 1851
Friday, May 04, 1923
William Rees-Mogg
Journalist
Saturday, Jul 14, 1928
Saturday, Dec 29, 2012
William Pickens
Journalist
Saturday, Jan 15, 1881
Tuesday, Apr 06, 1954

View All Journalist Quotes

Top Authors

Ernest Hemingway
Author
Friday, Jul 21, 1899
Sunday, Jul 02, 1961
Donald Trump
45Th President Of The United States
Friday, Jun 14, 1946
Thomas Sowell
Economist
Monday, Jun 30, 1930
Abraham Lincoln
16Th U.S. President
Sunday, Feb 12, 1809
Saturday, Apr 15, 1865
Henry David Thoreau
Author
Saturday, Jul 12, 1817
Tuesday, May 06, 1862
Stephen Hawking
Physicist
Thursday, Jan 08, 1942
Deepak Chopra
Author
Wednesday, Oct 22, 1947
Steve Jobs
Entrepreneur
Thursday, Feb 24, 1955
Wednesday, Oct 05, 2011
Vince Lombardi
Football Player
Wednesday, Jun 11, 1913
Thursday, Sep 03, 1970
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Poet
Saturday, Aug 05, 1809
Thursday, Oct 06, 1892
Chanakya
Teacher
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Charles Spurgeon
Preacher
Thursday, Jun 19, 1834
Sunday, Jan 31, 1892
Edgar Allan Poe
Author
Thursday, Jan 19, 1809
Sunday, Oct 07, 1849
Khalil Gibran
Poet
Saturday, Jan 06, 1883
Friday, Apr 10, 1931
Napoleon Bonaparte
Military Commander
Tuesday, Aug 15, 1769
Saturday, May 05, 1821

View All Authors

Dexter Filkins Quotes - Page 1

Picture Quotes Maker

Related Journalist Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page

Stay Connected

Picture Quotes Maker

Related Journalist Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page