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It does surprise me that intelligent people in the 21st century could claim that if you respond to the terrorists with force, you spawn terrorism, but if you appease them, you somehow tame them. This argument, as I said, is very interesting, and very surprising.

The idea of reasoning with terrorists without force or with appeasement is naive, and I think it's dangerous.

You may gain temporary appeasement by a policy of concession to violence, but you do not gain lasting peace that way.

When it comes to terrorism, governments seem to suffer from a collective amnesia. All of our historical experience tells us that there can be no purely military solution to a political problem, and yet every time we confront a new terrorist group, we begin by insisting we will never talk to them.

Appeasement was never a very clever policy, and it should not be our option today.

We can prevent many people from becoming terrorists by truly listening to people who feel they've been treated unjustly and responding to their concerns with a sense of justice and compassion.

Terrorism will spill over if you don't speak up.

Engagement is not appeasement. Engagement is not surrender.

You have to steer a course between not appalling people, but at the same time not misleading them.

It's not a choice between war and peace. It's a choice between war and endless war. It's not appeasement. I think it's better even to call it American self-interest.