Even in the United States and in other free nations, some journalists, academics, public officials, and saddest of all young people have developed and promulgated idealized, warped views of tyrannical regimes.

Our leaders can’t feel compelled to tell their bosses what they want to hear.

It’s so damn complex. If you ever think you have the solution to this, you’re wrong and you’re dangerous.

Military operations alone cannot defeat an insurgency because only economic development and political action can address most sources of disaffection. If military operations are not conducted consistent with political objectives or occur without economic development, they are certain to alienate the population further, reduce the amount of intelligence available to […] security forces, and strengthen rather than weaken the enemy.

Education combined with the restoration of civility in public discourse can reduce the vitriol that widens the fissures in society that Russia and others exploit.

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

Consistency and will are, therefore, important dimensions of strategic competence. But our will is diminished. As our foreign policies swung from over-optimism to resignation, identity politics interacted with new forms of populism. That interaction divided us and diminished confidence in our democratic principles, institutions, and processes.

It gives space to these groups that foment hatred and intolerance.

It’s not. This was a poor example of democracy internationally, but also within our own country.

I don’t. Our Founders wrote the Constitution with every crisis they could imagine in mind. I have confidence in that system. It’s going to work.

Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.

We’re trying to find areas of cooperation with Russia in the area of counterterrorism and the campaign against ISIS.

Meetings between Presidents, as you know, are supposed to be privileged. They’re supposed to be confidential. They’re supposed to allow the president and other leaders to have frank exchanges.

And one of the things that I’m most concerned about is the confidence, the confidentiality of those kind of meetings between President and Russian Foreign Minister, as you know, are extremely important. And so, I am really concerned about kind of leaks, because it undermines everybody’s trust in that kind of an environment where you can have frank, candid, and often times unconventional conversations to try to protect American interests and secure the American people.

The war in Vietnam was not lost in the field, nor was it lost on the front pages of The New York Times or the college campuses. It was lost in Washington, D.C.