Dexter Filkins War Quotations

In war, people find themselves in extraordinary circumstances, and in those circumstances, they act in extraordinary ways. In war, you see people at their very best and their very worst, acting in ways you could never imagine. War is human drama at its most epic and most intense.

The whole kind of post-World War I settlement that formed the modern Middle East is in danger of collapsing, and we can - we, the United States, you know, the preeminent power in the world - we can say that we want to ignore that, but how long can we avert our gaze? And how long can we stay out?

It is one of the great ironies of the American war in Iraq - was that the guys who really got the most out of it were the Iranians. And they have us to thank for that. Yeah, I mean we basically put Maliki in power in 2006, but he has been - he's really not a friend of the United States. He's a friend of the Iranian regime.