Syria

“Civil wars, like the one in Syria, don't end overnight. On average, we're looking at a decade. And in the case of something as complex as Syria, when you have multiple actors involved, well beyond a decade”

“We have over five million Syrian refugees outside the country, over six million internally displaced, which means that there are more than half of the original population of Syria now does not live in their homes.”

“Adversary foreign power. Don't confuse it with anything else. It is led by a person who does not have the United States' best interests at heart, and who wants to reestablish hegemony over a region that involves a lot of countries that don't want to be subject…”

“And I think, you know, you have to have some measure of that wherever it comes from to work on those kinds of issues and not, you know, be crushed, for example, by the weight of the humanitarian crisis in Syria.”