John F. Kerry Quotes About Isil
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If Russia is there [in Syria] alone fighting them [ISIL], guess what? Russia becomes the target and Russia starts seeing - who knows - MANPADs will find their way in there, airplanes will fall out of the sky. They will become vilified. They'll become the new magnet, together with Assad, for the jihadis.
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It's likely that people will say we're all interested in destroying - ISIL is a threat to everybody. There isn't one country in the region that doesn't despise what ISIL stands for and is doing and that doesn't want to eliminate them.
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Those localized efforts take a long time and they don't deal with the larger issue of ISIL and the question of what you're going to do to really have a solution here. We have to save Syria.
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If [Bashar] Assad himself could save this whole process by saying, "I will engage in a managed transition where we all work together to stabilize the government, save the institutions of government, and turn on ISIL and preserve Syria." That could happen. It all depends on one man, and Russia and Iran should not be so stubborn here that they tie this whole thing up simply because of one person.
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I met with many of - a number of [Syrian] refugees in Berlin the other day, and I was struck by how educated, intelligent, and patriotic they are. They want to go back. They love their country. And there are so many of them still in Jordan and in refugee camps in Lebanon and in Turkey, that if you could create the climate within which they could begin to come back, I believe there is such a history of secularism within Syria, even tolerance within Syria, that if we can deal with ISIL, yes. That's the key. And with ISIL there, not a chance.
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I had a chance to talk with President [Vladimir] Putin and he clearly said to me very directly, "I will think about that. I will think about this challenge of how we win." Look, this is not easy for Putin. Everybody says, "Oh, Putin's made a big move." Well, Putin is [in Syria] now; and if he wants to fight ISIL alone, that's a challenge, folks.
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We have staring us in the face here an enormous opportunity to actually find a way forward to have peace and stability in Syria, to reconstitute it. It'll take years to do that. This will not be an easy fight even with concerted coordination with respect to ISIL. But it is far more doable with that kind of approach than otherwise.
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The agreement is fundamentally that we want to try to resolve this. The agreement is that ISIL is a threat to everybody, and we need to come together to find a way to fight ISIL. The agreement is that we want to save Syria, keep it unified, keep it secular. So surely in those very fundamental principles on which we could agree.
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We achieved a deal with the Russians that didn't wind up in two days of strikes that would have sent a, quote, "message," but would not have removed the weapons. We struck a deal to get all of the declared weapons out of Syria. Never before in a conflict has that ever happened, that during the conflict weapons of mass destruction are taken out of the zone of conflict. And thank God we did that, because if we hadn't done that, today ISIL would have those chemical weapons in large parts of the country.
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Three-quarters of [Bashar Assad] country is displaced. It's in Jordan, it's in Lebanon, it's in Turkey, and in the desert. The threat is that those people in the desert and others could become the next acolytes of ISIL if we don't find a way to join together to go after ISIL.
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And if [Vladimir Putin] does fight ISIL alone, how does it work out for Russia to have sided with Assad, sided with Iran, sided with Hizballah, when they're trying to reach out to the rest of the Sunni world in the region? That's not a good equation for Russia.
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I heard Katty Kay's name and I know Katty Kay said we didn't have a plan. Well, there is a plan, and the President [Barack Obama] is moving forward with any number of options and ways to augment our efforts on ISIL.
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There's an agreement that Syria should be a unified country, united; that it needs to be secular; that ISIL needs to be taken on; and that there needs to be a managed transition, but there is a difference obviously in what that means and what that outcome may or may not be.
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