One has to understand what the enemy is all about: the enemy's history, the enemy's culture, the enemy's aspirations. If you understand these well, you can perhaps move towards peace.

Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war in Afghanistan, unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

The Israelis have taken a lot of security measures which reduce significantly the ability of Iran to inflict truly severe pain in Israel. But America is vulnerable with 100,000 troops in Iraq and more than half of that in Afghanistan, and we depend heavily on access to Middle Eastern oil. We're sitting targets for debilitating Iranian retaliation.

It's perfectly natural to desire more troops when engaged in a military operation facing serious obstacles, and the more troops you have, probably, the [lower the] risk of causalities.

Acting alone in a world that's alive in political stirring is to condemn oneself to isolation and probably protracted warfare of the kind that can be dissipating.

I think if NATO haven't expanded, we would have a no-man's zone between the E.U. and NATO and Russia, and that would be very dangerous.

Because when you kill 300 people, 400 people, who have nothing to do with the provocations Hezbollah staged, but you do it in effect deliberately by being indifferent to the scale of collateral damage, you're killing hostages in the hope of intimidating those that you want to intimidate. And more likely than not you will not intimidate them. You'll simply outrage them and make them into permanent enemies with the number of such enemies increasing.