Malcolm Nance quotes

The 2003 war in Iraq may be considered the greatest error in American policy since the Civil War. Its ramifications are earth-shattering and will impact us and our safety for generations. It may completely unravel the entire Middle East forever. (Malcolm Nance)
For years before my Navy enlistment, I had studied the Soviet Union and the KGB's history of political intrigue in preparation for a career in intelligence. View quote
Malcolm Nance
The Republicans want an autocracy where the rights of minorities and others are not protected. View quote
Malcolm Nance
For an old spy and codebreaker like myself, nothing in the world happens by coincidence. View quote
Malcolm Nance
The attacks of September 11 were made possible, in part, by the fact that U.S. law enforcement had a bias that 'rich Saudis are safe Arabs.' Al Qaeda understood that bias and relied on it to operate freely in the United States for years, even when the terrorists were engaged in activities that the authorities considered suspicious. View quote
Malcolm Nance
Osama bin Laden has managed to replace fear of God and adherence to the Quran with his philosophy of jihad above all else. What's behind that facade is the true philosophical intentions of al Qaeda: the establishment of a new Islamic caliphate that will defeat democracy as the greater of the two political orders. View quote
Malcolm Nance
Vladimir Putin is creating an axis of authoritarian regimes that he will lead. View quote
Malcolm Nance
Hamas and Hezbollah operate within geopolitical norms. They can be negotiated and reasoned with. ISIL is a different animal altogether - a religious cult an order of magnitude more extreme than even the most extreme Islamic groups of the past. View quote
Malcolm Nance
Vladimir Putin understood, from the Communist era when he was a KGB officer, that the Russian propaganda system of targeting Western media - that in the digital world, you could easily pull the Western media around by a nose ring. View quote
Malcolm Nance
Across all U.S. intelligence agencies, there is a lack of cultural respect and a poorly tuned attitude toward foreign peoples and cultures. View quote
Malcolm Nance
Russia's a small country. It's really poor. It has nothing other than oil and weapons sales. (Malcolm Nance)
Al Qaeda has dominated the battlefield of the soul among the disaffected, disenfranchised, and dissatisfied. It promises action instead of discussion. View quote
Malcolm Nance
Whenever counterterrorism professionals see punditry and media make grand pronunciations on terrorism that defy all demonstrable evidence, an unrepeatable oath is usually muttered. View quote
Malcolm Nance
A militant's profile lies not in his age, race, culture, or education; anyone can join or be adopted by the al Qaeda network, the only prerequisite being a willingness to accept the group's radical, cultlike ideology. View quote
Malcolm Nance
The goals of Russia since 1917 have been to destroy capitalism, discredit democracy, and show that Communist collectivism was the greatest social and political system in the world. View quote
Malcolm Nance
The global jihad movement ideology is a destructive religious cult. It is so un-Islamic that it is virtually anti-Islamic. View quote
Malcolm Nance
I've been involved in air strikes against Syria and operations against Syria numerous times in my career. View quote
Malcolm Nance
Yes, ISIL is a terror-based insurgent army that seeks to establish a Caliphate, but the group's actual end goal is far from political: ISIL believes that, through jihad, it will bring about the Day of Judgment. This is not true Islam. View quote
Malcolm Nance
Working in the Middle East, daily I face the questions, disbelief, and accusations about how Americans could violate the human rights which they once championed. View quote
Malcolm Nance
Al Qaeda's leaders seek to reverse what they claim are corrupt Islamic practices bookended by the Mongol invasions in 1256 and Ataturk's ending the caliphate in 1924. Theirs is a fight to turn Islam's clock back to the time of Prophet Muhammad's original followers. View quote
Malcolm Nance
Identifying terrorists on the battlefield is relatively simple. (Malcolm Nance)
Al Qaeda is a racially diverse organization that is well aware of its dependence on a labor pool dominated by Arab Muslim men. It also has an adaptable and fluid counterintelligence mind-set. View quote
Malcolm Nance
As a general rule, interrogations without clearly defined legal limits are brutal. Particularly when they have an imperative to get information out of a captive immediately. View quote
Malcolm Nance
Intelligence officers are a peculiar lot. Whether they are active or retired, their brains are wired for a completely different way of seeing the world around them. View quote
Malcolm Nance
Referring to ISIL as a destructive religious cult rather than a legitimate theo-political 'radical Islamic' group is not just more accurate, it also exposes ISIL's corrupt religious narrative. View quote
Malcolm Nance