Quotes About Afghanistan

Whether or not Afghanistan would be a peaceful nation-state had we not gone into Iraq I doubt. Afghanistan is going to be Afghanistan, no matter how hard we try to make it something else.

I returned to Kabul after a 27-year absence. I came away with some optimism but not as much as I had hoped for. The two major issues in Afghanistan are a lack of security outside Kabul (particularly in the south and east) and the powerful warlords ruling over the provinces with little or no allegiance to the central government. The other rapidly rising concern is the narcotic trade which, if not dealt with, may turn Afghanistan into another Bolivia or Colombia.

The Iraq War has thrown such a heavy shadow on Afghanistan that you can't hardly get any news about that now. I went to Afghanistan this year and spent more time there than I did in Iraq ... just 'cause they were forgotten about, and I wanted them to know that I appreciated it.

I feel most empires fell when they started to act human, but then look at Russia. They kept a pretty strong hand, and they fell from Afghanistan alone because Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. I guess you just can't sustain it.

We do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan. We see no military - we seek no military bases there. It is agonizing for America to lose our young men and women. It is costly and politically difficult to continue this conflict. We would gladly bring every single one of our troops home if we could be confident that there were not violent extremists in Afghanistan and now Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can.

And across Afghanistan, every single day, Afghan soldiers, Afghan police and ISAF troops are serving shoulder-to-shoulder in some very difficult situations. And our engagement with them, our shoulder-to-shoulder relationship with them, our conduct of operations with them every single day defines the real relationship.

The best way to get Americans to focus on what's happening in Afghanistan is by using the example of their own.

The president [Barack Obama] decided to leave more troops than he had originally planned in Afghanistan. We have a very cooperative government there, with Ashraf Ghani and his top - his top partner, Abdullah. And they are doing their very best. And the Afghan army is actually fighting. The Afghan army is taking heavy losses defending Afghan territory.

The Islamic world is not only suffering from the American occupation of Palestine and Iraq, it's also suffering from the unbelievable corruption in Afghanistan by Afghans themselves and also in Iraq - I'm just giving these 2 examples of countries which are under direct occupation; I do not mean at all to negate the terrible events that led to this or what's going on with the foreign occupation there.

Continuous wars - which we have now had since 2001 - starting with Afghanistan, continuing on to Iraq. And even since Iraq, it's been more or less continuous. The appalling war in Libya, which has wrecked that country and wrecked that part of the world, and which isn't over by any means. The indirect Western intervention in Syria, which has created new monsters. These are policies, which if carried out by any individual government, would be considered extremist. Now, they're being carried out collectively by the United States, backed by some of the countries of the European Union.

There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.

Canada is preparing to play a major role in the continued stability and security of Afghanistan through ISAF.

The United States has been essentially engaged in an ongoing war that most people date from 2001. That war has taken us to Afghanistan, to Iraq, in a lesser way to other countries - Libya, Somalia, Yemen.

Stamps from Afghanistan are hilarious. You can tell when the revolutions are because suddenly they stop having pictures of the mullahs and the independence monument and they start having fish on them.

Al Qaeda is on the run, partly because the United States is in Afghanistan, pushing on al Qaeda, and working internationally to cut off the flow of funds to al Qaeda. They are having a difficult time. They failed in this endeavor.

Liberia is not at the center of a massive geopolitical game. Afghanistan is and has always been. The history is dramatic, the politics are dramatic, the landscape is incredibly dramatic.

If the Taliban comes back to power, the impact would be devastating. A country that has made great strides, in terms of development indicators, would take a huge step backwards. Afghanistan's national economy would be devastated.

The bureaucratic culture that we [Afghanistan] have inherited is an obstacle. Hierarchies may be extremely efficient for dealing with certain events, but they are not quick in responding to global, flexible networks.

The warlords took part in atrocities during the civil war in Afghanistan. They looted, they raped, they killed. They have become incredibly empowered and entrenched. They live in mansions, they have jobs in the government, and they're incredibly powerful. In Kabul, people don't want to speak about it too publicly, because these people are essentially like Tony Soprano.

John Walker Lindh, a twenty-year-old American studying in Pakistan, was captured in Northern Afghanistan fighting for the Taliban. Experts call it the worst semester abroad program ever.

I think 9/11 was a couple of thousand assholes in Afghanistan who ran rampant and just kind of did their thing and we could have gotten them in Tora Bora if that was handled better.

What's always got me is the fact that when people talked on the telly about Iraq, before Afghanistan kicked off, you'd get only these public-school-type army officers talking about what was going on out there. I kept thinking, 'Why don't we get the true voice of the squaddie? Why don't we hear from the lads on the battlefield?'

It doesn't matter what we think we are there [in Afghanistan] for; it matters what they think. They think we are invaders.

Military technologies such as Drones, SWAT vehicles and machine-gun-equipped armored trucks once used exclusively in high-intensity war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan are now being supplied to police departments across the nation and not surprisingly the increase in such weapons is matched by training local police in war zone tactics and strategies.

We need to deal with the problem of al Qaeda, make sure that they can't have a sanctuary in Afghanistan and guarantee that we have regional stabilization and particularly focused on Pakistan.

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!

I believed Afghanistan was always going to be hard. It's the fifth poorest country in the world. And when you fly over it, you realize that there's not much there. And, of course, it has the problem, too, of being on that border with Pakistan in basically an ungoverned region that has given the terrorists a staging ground. So it's a very difficult place. But I do believe that the mission there can succeed if success is defined as helping the Afghans to prevent the Taliban from being an existential threat to the Afghan government.

We had a couple of minor coups that made a big difference. We snared away from a competitor a correspondent already on the ground in Afghanistan. That was an enormous help to us, because there we were.

It's hard for comic actors used to pulling faces just to be on screen, but Tina Fey does a good job. I liked watching her. The part, though, isn't filled in. When Baker announces that she's gotten too used to the madness of Afghanistan, that she's worried she's thinking of it as normal, the sentiment comes out of nowhere. The dramatic arc in "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" is nonexistent. The movie evaporates in the mind like water in the Afghan desert.

Some dozens of years ago, there was a debate conducted between people insisting that "this loaf of bread must be redistributed," and the others who said "instead of worrying about redistributing it, cutting differently, let's make it bigger." A third possibility was not imagined: that the loaf may be shrinking. But it is now a genuine possibility. It is even acting upon already, like in the case of the American invasion of Afghanistan and of Iraq in order to secure the supply of petrol for the Americans addicted to gas-guzzling cars.

In Iraq, until before the war, the women were scientists, museum directors, doctors. I'm not valourising Saddam Hussein or the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, which was brutal and killed hundreds of thousands of people - it was the Soviet Union's Vietnam. I'm just saying that now, in these new wars, whole countries have slipped into mayhem - the women have just been pushed back into their burqas - and not by choice.

[ General James Mattis] is a Marine's Marine who has served in combat in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

If I look at the really important questions in [Middle East] region, I see Iran, where there is a strong desire for a freer society and where people are repressed by a small group of ayatollahs. I see Syria, where we can see a similar desire of the people to be free. These two countries fund Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations and are hurting our efforts in Afghanistan and have been extremely harmful in Iraq. Then I also see large, important countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

I can look you in the eye and tell you I feel I've tried to solve the problem diplomatically to the max, and would have committed troops both in Afghanistan and Iraq knowing what I know today.

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.

Iraq and Afghanistan have exacted a toll on America - in lives, treasure and standing - that it will take a generation to work through.

At the time we are focusing our efforts primarily on building shelters for refugees. Homelessness in Afghanistan is a huge problem.

During one of my treks through Afghanistan, we lost our corkscrew. We were compelled to live on food and water for several days.

The legal system in Afghanistan is very immature and porous.

Military surge in Afghanistan to eliminate the Taliban.

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.

The question about the Salafi is an important question as I say in Arab Awakening, and have often repeated since. I am really underlining the importance of this, because we really don't have very good memories. Remember - the Taliban in Afghanistan were not at all politicised in the beginning. They were just on about education. And then they were pushed by the Saudi and the Americans to be against the Russian colonisation, and as a result they came to be politicised.

Afghanistan has other enormous challenges as well, including a political system that is still very much developing, although there has been some progress in the past several years.

US forces have been increased [in Afghanistan ] from some 21,000 to about 31,000 over the past two years and a number of coalition countries have also increased their forces, there still are not sufficient troops.

Over in Afghanistan, Osama stuck his head out of the cave and saw a shadow. So, that means six more weeks of bombing.

Now, I know there are many Americans who say, 'Get out of Afghanistan. Bring 'em all home.' And there are others who say, 'Put in hundreds of thousands of more.'

There are very interesting books about these events, for instance one by a very well-known American historian named William R. Polk called Violent Politics. It's a record of what are basically guerrilla wars from the American Revolution right up through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.