Europeans don’t like to talk about intelligence, and they often pretend their countries don’t spy. – David Ignatius
The secret of any kind of reporting is to go with a guide. So if you, you’re going to see Hezbollah in Beirut, you go with someone who knows the local people, and you’ll be fine. – David Ignatius
A disaffected America can be drawn into a civilized – but disruptive – dialogue about political change and reformation. – David Ignatius
In a chaotic world, U.S. diplomats will probably have even less contact with the people they need to reach. – David Ignatius
Chinese experts noted that the U.S. economy has rebounded from the 2008 crash more strongly than some analysts here had expected, while China’s own growth is slowing after several decades of rocket-ship acceleration. – David Ignatius
The framers hated the tyranny of King George, but they were also afraid of the mob. That’s why they put so many checks and balances into our system, to guard against the excesses of a government that might be inflamed by public passion or perverted by a dictator’s whim. – David Ignatius
U.S. power flows from our unmatched military might, yes. But in a deeper way, it’s a product of the dominance of the U.S. economy. – David Ignatius
President Obama was right to ban torture, but the public must understand that this decision carries a potential cost in lost information. That’s what makes it a moral choice. – David Ignatius
Make the financial industry pay for its mistakes. That’s the idea behind the best of the Obama administration’s reform proposals: If banks issue securities backed by mortgages, say, then require them to hold some of that paper so that they will bear some of the losses. – David Ignatius
As Obama prepares to begin the last year of his presidency, he stands in an unusual position on the national stage: He is the rationalist, a creature of intellect rather than emotion. – David Ignatius
A world in which there are no secrets that can be protected at all is going to be a pretty dangerous world. – David Ignatius
Yes, Europe needs to be more welcoming, but that’s only half of it. Muslims need to embrace the obligations of European residence and citizenship. – David Ignatius
Intelligence services exist to do things that are illegal abroad. They exist to tell lies. – David Ignatius
Training a reliable military force that adheres to Western norms and standards is the work of a generation, not a few months. – David Ignatius
American politics, like most things, is a story of what statisticians describe as the reversion to the mean. – David Ignatius
Sometimes James Bond movies drive me crazy. They’re fun to watch, but they don’t have anything to do at all with what intelligence officers really do. – David Ignatius
Russia is emerging as an essential diplomatic and security partner for the U.S. in Syria, despite the Obama administration’s opposition to Moscow’s support for President Bashar al-Assad. – David Ignatius
At the center of President Obama’s strategy for dealing with the Islamic State is an empty space. It’s supposed be filled by a ‘Sunni ground force,’ but after more than a year of effort, it’s still not there. Unless this gap is filled, Obama’s plan won’t work. – David Ignatius
I’ve tried, in ‘Bloodmoney,’ to tell a story that gets at the crazy relationship between the ISI and the CIA, these absolutely fascinating, often mutually destructive two scorpions in a bottle kind of relationship that they have. – David Ignatius
Saudi Arabia is a frightened monarchy. It’s beset by Sunni extremists from the Islamic State and Shiite extremists backed by Iran. – David Ignatius
Politicians need to rethink their reflexive invocations of the Second Amendment and the idea that the gun lobby is too powerful to challenge. – David Ignatius
We haven’t usually had to face the extreme questions about liberty and order because we’re not a nation of extremists. We love freedom and good government both. – David Ignatius
This is a universal human dream – that brains, not brawn, will rule – and the fact that America has the world’s finest institutions of higher education may be our greatest single national asset. – David Ignatius
The attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi has become a political football in the presidential campaign, with all the grandstanding and misinformation that entails. – David Ignatius
The value of catastrophic events is that they can help people face up to problems that are otherwise impossible to address. – David Ignatius
Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Centcom, is probably the most decorated officer of his generation. – David Ignatius
It’s fashionable with the Sarah Palin set to attack Harvard and treat its graduates as elitists. But if you spend any time on campus, you see students drawn from all over the world – an astonishing number these days with roots in Asia – whose chief assets are brainpower and hard work. – David Ignatius
This experience of getting so lost in my writing that I lose track of time, or of anything outside the imagined world, is a release for me. – David Ignatius
