The Obama administration has framed its defense of the controversial bulk collection of all American phone records as necessary to prevent a future 9/11. – Peter L. Bergen
A key flaw of the Obama administration’s approach to Afghanistan has been constantly announcing proposed withdrawal dates for U.S. forces, which has enabled the Taliban to believe they can simply wait out the clock. – Peter L. Bergen
Islam is, to be sure, a big tent, and the one and a half billion Muslims in the world run the gamut from mystical, moderate, pacific Sufis to Salafists. – Peter L. Bergen
Bin Laden comes out of a business background – he studied public administration and economics at university, and he worked for his family company, which was obviously a rather successful enterprise. – Peter L. Bergen
Trump, of course, has been very wrong in the past about important issues such as President Barack Obama’s place of birth and Mexican immigrants, but the Republican frontrunner is correct in saying that former Republican President George W. Bush did not keep the country safe during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. – Peter L. Bergen
Every lethal terrorist attack in the United States since 9/11 has been carried out by an American citizen or a legal permanent resident, not by recent immigrants or by refugees. So tamping down immigration won’t fix the real issue, which is ‘homegrown’ terrorism. – Peter L. Bergen
I was the only outsider to visit the Abbottabad compound where bin Laden lived before the Pakistani military demolished it. – Peter L. Bergen
Like the attack on Pearl Harbor, another hinge event in American history, 9/11 was a great tactical victory for America’s enemies. But in both these cases, the tactical success of the attacks was not matched by strategic victories. Quite the reverse. – Peter L. Bergen
It is in Pakistan’s own interest that the Afghan army is able to fight effectively against the Taliban, which is more likely if they continue to have American advisers at their side. – Peter L. Bergen
The Second Amendment is, of course, very much part of the American fabric. But the intent of the founders was that the amendment protected the rights of citizens to bear arms in a militia for their collective self-defense. – Peter L. Bergen
Without U.S. forces in the country, there is a strong possibility Afghanistan could host a reinvigorated Taliban allied to a reinvigorated al Qaeda. – Peter L. Bergen
There is considerable merit to the notion of treating gun violence as a public health matter. – Peter L. Bergen
In February I secured permission to enter Osama bin Laden’s compound in the northern Pakistani city of Abbottabad, where he was killed and where he had lived for the last half-decade of his life; the first, and only, journalist to do so. – Peter L. Bergen
It is very much in America’s national security interests to ensure that the Taliban do not dominate Afghanistan and that neither ISIS nor al Qaeda continues their growth in the country. – Peter L. Bergen
Apostasy is a grave crime in Islam and punishable by death in the eyes of members of al Qaeda. – Peter L. Bergen
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 L. Bergen
We climbed the stairs to the third floor, where Osama bin Laden died early in the morning of May 2, 2011. – Peter L. Bergen
Bin Laden’s death is just a punctuation point on a set of problems they’ve had for a long time. I think the prognosis for al-Qaida and groups like it is really bad, and that’s a good thing. – Peter L. Bergen
If the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies were private companies and were chronically unable to accomplish one of their key missions, their shareholders would have long ago revolted, fired their management, and their stock would be trading at values near zero. – Peter L. Bergen
Some might say that that while al Qaeda the organization may be basically dead, its ideology continues to thrive and to inspire ‘lone wolves’ to attack the United States. – Peter L. Bergen
The civil war across the Middle East between the Shia and the Sunni empowers groups like ISIS and al Qaeda who claim to be the defenders of Sunni rights against Shia attack. – Peter L. Bergen
Common sense would tell you that the idea that Saudi Arabia was paying for bin Laden’s expenses while he was living in Abbottabad is simply risible. Bin Laden’s principal goal was the overthrow of the Saudi royal family as a result of which his Saudi citizenship was revoked as far back as 1994. – Peter L. Bergen
Because Scotland and Northern Ireland want to remain part of the E.U., there is the quite real possibility that Scotland and even Northern Ireland might now choose to go their own way on membership within the E.U. and the ‘United Kingdom’ would suddenly effectively be only England and Wales. – Peter L. Bergen
Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad belongs to the small Alawite sect and is therefore considered a heretic by many Sunnis; al-Assad runs a secular regime, and therefore he is considered by Sunni militants to be an apostate, and he is inflicting a total war on his Sunni population. – Peter L. Bergen
Bush administration officials, of course, deny that they didn’t take the threat urgently enough, but there is no debating that in their public utterances, private meetings, and actions, the al Qaeda threat barely registered. – Peter L. Bergen
Hersh’s account of the bin Laden raid is a farrago of nonsense that is contravened by a multitude of eyewitness accounts, inconvenient facts, and simple common sense. – Peter L. Bergen
In quiet ways far too complex to hold Trump’s interest, Muslims in the United States and around the world are helping every day to prevent massacres such as Orlando from happening. – Peter L. Bergen
The deep problems that afflict the Middle East are not easy to fix, but they must be dealt with if we are not to see a son of ISIS, or even a grandson of ISIS, developing in the years to come. – Peter L. Bergen