Quotes About Afghanistan

Afghanistan would have been difficult enough without Iraq. Iraq made it impossible. The argument that had we just focused on Afghanistan we'd now be okay is persuasive, but it omits the fact that we weren't supposed to get involved in nation-building in Afghanistan.

I was thinking about Afghanistan's future, Afghanistan's next generation, what we have next. These children who learn how to kill people, how to do jihad, how to behead, how to fire, this would be Afghanistan.

The word 'hero' has been bandied about a lot to refer to anyone killed in Afghanistan or Iraq. But anyone who voluntarily goes to Afghanistan or Iraq [as a soldier] is fighting for an evil cause under an evil commander in chief.

The future of Afghanistan is incredibly dark, and decisions are happening incredibly quickly. Speculation is a fool's game, but I've seen many political projections that look like the Taliban could hold most of the country, and possibly Kabul, within perhaps a short time. I can't imagine how Afghanistan's fall isn't going to be ten times faster than Iraq's. The role of women in that space is terrifying, and the idea of retribution is a nightmare.

But in Afghanistan, the general rule was that since you were fighting the Taliban, which was not a lawful government force, the Geneva Conventions did not apply. And that led to a lot of excesses in Afghanistan, excesses like Abu Ghraib that were already well-publicized.

I think that the first point to be made is there is no "solution" in Afghanistan. Solution I put in quotes. We live in an op-ed culture, which is to say, you always need to have a solution. The last third of that op-ed piece needs to say, "Do this, this, this and this." There is no this, this, this, and this, that will make Afghanistan right.

Probably the single most commen response I get from my readesr, be it through e-mails or letters, is that they did not know much, or at times, they're quite frank, they didn't care much about Afghanistan. But they pay attention more after reading these novels, and at times it has triggered this humaitarian spirt: some have donated money or at time times, people have joined humatiarian organizations that work in Afghanistan.

There is a direct line relationship between what happened in Afghanistan in the work up to 11 September 2001 and what we're doing in Afghanistan today.

My family left Afghanistan in 1976, well before the Communist coup and the Soviet invasion. We certainly thought we would be going back. But when we saw those Soviet tanks rolling into Afghanistan, the prospect for return looked very dim. Few of us, I have to say, envisioned that nearly a quarter century of bloodletting would follow.

I laughed. Partly at the joke, partly at how Afghan humor never changed. Wars were waged, the Internet was invented, and a robot had rolled on the surface of Mars, and in Afghanistan we were still telling Mullah Nasruddin jokes.

NATO is in our national security interests. And, yes, we pay a lot for it, but, when we had Afghanistan, NATO troops were by our side from almost all of the NATO members. And they put their life and treasure on the line for us.

Because of you, in Afghanistan we've broken the momentum of the Taliban. Because of you, we've begun a transition to the Afghans that will allow us to bring our troops home from there. And around the globe, as we draw down in Iraq, we have gone after al Qaeda so that terrorists who threaten America will have no safe haven, and Osama bin Laden will never again walk the face of this Earth.

The other problem is that the priority of many soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan is operational security: not getting killed. Now that is a very valid priority, but it has to be balanced against many other priorities, especially not killing too many locals in the process.

The president is being denounced for not taking the kind of pre-emptive action in Afghanistan that he has been so passionately denounced for taking in Iraq. Damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

My favorite is when you go to Afghanistan and you meet the special forces guys, and they look like these heavily armed surfers. These guys are the best. You see guys dressed as full Afghans, but then wearing a Yankees hat.

What happened to those men and women at Fort Hood had a horrible symbolism: Members of the best trained, best equipped fighting force on the planet gunned down by a guy who said a few goofy things no one took seriously. And that's the problem: America has the best troops and fiercest firepower, but no strategy for throttling the ideology that drives the enemy — in Afghanistan and in Texas.

The people who illegally cross into the country are from countries that have very close ties to al Qaeda, whether it's Yemen or Afghanistan, Pakistan, China. It is an absolute national disgrace.

Let's take Pravda in the 1980s. I mean you could have read things in Pravda saying that it was a stupid error to invade Afghanistan: "it was a dumb thing to do, we have to get out, it's costing us too much." I mean that U.S. analog of that would be "extreme liberalism," and it has been pretty well studied.

It costs us $1 million for every troop[soldier] in Afghanistan.

The recent wave of Taliban attacks has made clear that the international community must not waiver in its support for a stable, secure and prosperous Afghanistan.

In 2001, we were told that the war in Afghanistan was a feminist mission. The marines were liberating Afghan women from the Taliban. Can you really bomb feminism into a country? And now, after 25 years of brutal war - 10 years against the Soviet occupation, 15 years of US occupation - the Taliban is riding back to Kabul and will soon be back to doing business with the United States.

Americans have eliminated Iran's worst enemies, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam [Hussein]. I occasionally threatened my Iranian counterpart in Kabul that one day I would send him a big bill for what we did. But, seriously, Iran is pursuing a dual strategy in Iraq. On the one hand, the Iranians, after decades of hostility, are now interested in good relations. On the other hand, they want to keep the country weak and dominate the region.

We are not in Afghanistan for the sake of the education policy in a broken 13th-century country. We are there so the people of Britain and our global interests are not threatened.

What is meant by: "We mustn't give in to the terrorists"? We gave in to them the moment the first bombs fell on Afghanistan.

We must be honest in acknowledging that neither Germany nor the US has the luxury of assuming that we can skate by on half-measures in Afghanistan and Pakistan and not risk suffering the consequences.

We dont see that the Taliban ultimately can succeed, and its a combination both of what the international community can do to support Afghanistan, not just in the short term, but over the long term.

It will take time to eradicate a cancer like Isil. And any time we take military action, there are risks involved - especially to the servicemen and women who carry out these missions. But I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.

Since January 2002, when the United States began detaining at Guantanamo Bay enemy combatants captured in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other fronts in the war on terror, critics have complained of human rights abuses.

Without women taking an active role in Afghan society, rebuilding Afghanistan is going to be very difficult.

We ought to say, "Occupy Wall Street, not Iraq," "Occupy Wall Street, not Afghanistan," "Occupy Wall Street, not Palestine." The two need to be put together. Otherwise people might not read the signs.

Suddenly that it was as dangerous to be in America as it was to be overseas. So that the false distinction that's made by the anti-war movement between being over there and over here was exposed for all to see as an illusion. Although a number of people, a large amount of people still share in it. In other words, when I've been in Iraq or Afghanistan, I've probably been safer because I can carry a weapon if I have to, than my wife and daughter are living in Washington.

In Desert Storm, we had too many troops; in Afghanistan probably not enough for the major commitment we have made.

Our tragedy today is not just that millions of people who called themselves communist or socialist were physically liquidated in Vietnam, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, not just that China and Russia, after all that revolution, have become capitalist economies, not just that the working class has been ruined in the United States and its unions dismantled, not just that Greece has been brought to its knees, or that Cuba will soon be assimilated into the free market - it is also that the language of the Left, the discourse of the Left, has been marginalised and is sought to be eradicated.

But apart from the military measures, security measures, of course, Afghanistan needs great help for building up its social life, its economic life. It has become a very poor country, neglected for many years.

Economics taught in most of the elite universities are practically useless in my context. My country [Afghanistan] is dominated by drug economy and a mafia; textbook economics does not work in my context.

You know, terrorism in Afghanistan had everything to do with the support for the mujahidin by Saudi Arabia and by the CIA that sought to create an international religious extremist group to fight the Soviet Union.

I'd play in Afghanistan if they wanted me to!

In most of the world, poetry has such a different reputation than it does in Western culture. Poetry is a popular genre in Afghanistan. If you turned on the radio, there would be a poetry program that would be as popular as The Real Housewives. People aren't listening to poetry as if they're taking their vitamins. Instead, it's a popular vessel you can fill with anything. You could fill it with sass. You could fill it with rage. You could fill it with political statements.

I do think that it is impossible for us to think only in terms of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and not think in terms of what's happening with Syria or Iran or Lebanon or Afghanistan and Pakistan. These things are interrelated. And if we are looking at the region as a whole and communicating a message to the Arab world and the Muslim world, that we are ready to initiate a new partnership based on mutual respect and mutual interest, then I think that we can make significant progress.

How could a guy sitting in a cave in Afghanistan, have... plotted so perfectly the hijacking of four planes and then guaranteed that three of them would end up precisely on their targets?

As Iraq erupts in civil war and America again contemplates intervention, that unfinished business should give new urgency to the question of how the United States military controlled the media coverage of its long involvement there and in Afghanistan.

People who need therapy are in Afghanistan. They've seen horrible human cruelty and degradation, but they don't have time or the money for therapy.

I applaud President Obamas decision to begin a partial withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan. However, I believe that we must go further and have a full withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops.

Did you hear this? They say now Osama bin Laden and his buddy Mullah Omar have left Afghanistan dressed as women. They dressed up as women and went across the border into Pakistan. I think they're going to make a movie about it. They're going to call it 'Some like it Jihad.'

If there's ever an example that military power alone cannot be successful in Afghanistan, I think it was the Soviet experience.

It is a fact that the Left routinely resists, then as now: Americans fought and died in Vietnam for freedom, just as they are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan today. Whatever mistakes generals and policymakers have made along the way cannot detract from that essential truth - which should be a part of any reliable history.

I'm not sure we have the right strategy in Afghanistan. Let me think this over for a few months.

Turkey is using the Islamic State in the same way as Pakistan used the Taliban in Afghanistan. You know, that's perhaps Turkey's strategy.