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.In my new book, I open with a quote from Donald Rumsfeld. In October 2001, he said of Afghanistan: "It's not a quagmire." Ten years later there are 150,000 Western troops there.

The people of Afghanistan will continue to remember his lasting friendship with the people of Afghanistan as well as his unstinting support during the years of jihad against the Soviets.

"Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age" was quite a favourite headline for some wobbly liberals. The slogan does all the work. But an instant's thought shows that Afghanistan is being, if anything, bombed OUT of the Stone Age.

Afghanistan is very satisfied with Croatia's participation in the NATO-led peace mission and expects Croatia to expand its contribution to peace restoration in Afghanistan to other areas as well.

Don't kid yourself. President Obama's decision to withdraw 33,000 troops from Afghanistan before he stands for reelection is not driven by the United States' 'position of strength' in the war zone as much as it is by grim economic and political realities at home.

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.

When girls in Canada dream about becoming members of parliament, they have a pretty good expectation that parliament is going to be around for them when they graduate. There is no such expectation in Afghanistan. It's all still hope and wanting it but not really sure if it's going to be around.

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

Obama is making a choice now that will lead to the deaths of many thousands of civilians in Afghanistan by American hands. By ordinary standards of presidents, he is a decent man. But those standards aren't good enough. He's in a position either to kill or not to kill, and he's made the decision to kill.

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

Trying to rebuild Afghanistan on the cheap has left the country in the hands of warlords and an impotent Northern Alliance puppet regime that runs Kabul and nothing else.

Let's withdraw from Afghanistan and have the army invade America - that's the only way we'll get new schools and roads.

I was in Afghanistan and then obviously in Iraq. And I realized that you can't control life. You can do a lot to prepare. You can train, and at the end of the day there's an element that's always going to be beyond your control.

Remember the rights of the savage, as we call him. Remember that the happiness of his humble home, remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan, among the winter snows, is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God, as can be your own.

Several million people inside and outside Afghanistan are destitute and desperately in need of help.

Osama Bin Laden is not well read and he's not sophisticated, but he will have worked out very coldly what America would do in response to this attack 9/11. I'm sure he wanted America to attack Afghanistan. Once you do what your enemy wants, you are walking into a trap, whether you think it's the right thing to do or not.

One of their major initiatives was getting all officers on Facebook. So the question is, why are these people who are there to train the Afghans being pressured to be on Facebook? Again, it sounds benign until you realize that the military's concern isn't the Afghans, it's convincing the American people that we should be in Afghanistan.Soldiers can put up pictures and say "See how happy the Afghans are because of our presence here." It's a way to directly influence the American people using propaganda.

Given Mr. Obama's lack of experience as an executive, and his past performance in crises such as the oil spill, it is reasonable for those of us who support the effort in Afghanistan to worry that he will not be up to the job.

The Syrian border town of Qa'im was the main gateway Islamic radicals used to go to Iraq. Syria became the passageway for extremists from Egypt, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations to fight a jihad against American forces in Iraq.

The big question now is who will take power in Afghanistan once the Taliban is defeated. I was thinking, how about Al Gore? He's not doing anything, he needs a job, and he's already got the beard.

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.

Military hardliners called me a 'security threat' for promoting peace in South Asia and for supporting a broad-based government in Afghanistan.

You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them. Actually, it’s a lot of fun to fight. You know, it’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right up front with you — I like brawling.

Winning in Afghanistan is having a country that is stable enough to ensure that there is no safe haven for Al Qaida or for a militant Taliban that welcomes Al Qaida. That's really the measure of success for the United States.

Over this August district work period, like many of my colleagues, I spent a lot of time with the men and women in uniform from my home State. The 196th Field Artillery Brigade just got back from a year in Afghanistan.

For instance, in the last five years [till 2016], we've admitted nearly 100,000 immigrants from Iraq and Afghanistan. And these two countries according to Pew Research, a majority of residents say that the barbaric practice of honor killings against women are often or sometimes justified. That's what they say.

I've always said that if you want to find out what's going on in Iraq or Afghanistan or Libya, I'll give you a choice. You can either read The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, or you can go to the NATO, ISAF, multi-national force websites where they have their own news releases. Who will give you a more accurate picture? I'll take the mainstream media.

A day in Afghanistan is like a week at home.

Since the Bush-Cheney Administration took office in January 2001, controlling the major oil and natural gas fields of the world had been the primary, though undeclared, priority of US foreign policy... Not only the invasion of Iraq, but also the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan, had nothing to do with 'democracy,' and everything to do with pipeline control across Central Asia and the militarization of the Middle East.

Afghanistan is the most daring and ambition mission in the history of NATO.

If you want to understand what's happening to the situation in a town in Afghanistan, go down to the market. Is it vibrant? Is it safe? That will tell you an enormous amount about the security situation.

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier.

Now, here we are, and we have Obama in office, and he has drawn down forces in Iraq - which is a plan that was on Bush's desk the day that he left office. The forces in Afghanistan, he's going to draw down, too. But at the same time, Obama has also expanded a lot of the more unsavory, covert aspects of the wars, with the drone strikes and some of the night-raid missions.

America has survived and grown stronger through September 11th and subsequent wars with Afghanistan and Iraq and those who seek to do us harm. We have faced - and met - tremendous challenges ramping up a public health and safety system to protect Americans from future threats.

The big nest was in Afghanistan, thats not quite cleared, then there are nests in the Philippines, there are nests in Indonesia, the Malaysians are clearing up their nests.

Throughout the last century there were multiple attempts at giving Afghan women more autonomy, to change marriage laws, to abolish the practice of bride price and child marriage, and to enforce women to be involved in school. Every time, the reaction from the traditionalists was one of contempt and scorn and at times outright rebellion. I think the emancipation of women in Afghanistan has to come from inside, through Afghans themselves, gradually, over time.

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.

[Afghanistan and Iraq] are still countries that are fragile enough that we're gonna have to partner with them in some way.

And the fact of the matter is there were thousands of people that went through those training camps in Afghanistan. We know they are seeking deadlier weapons - chemical, biological and nuclear weapons if they can get it.

In his first term, President Barack Obama played a cautious manager navigating the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression and cleaning up the messes left by President George W. Bush in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This flirtation with isolationism in the Republican party is over. It's giving way to a more muscular foreign policy than I've been advocating. But I'm also advocating building up others. Build a small schoolhouse in Afghanistan to help a poor young girl have a say about her children will destroy the ideology more than a bomb.

There's an enormous amount of corruption, and as one American adviser put it to me, "The police in Afghanistan are thugs. We equip them, we train them, and now they are equipped and trained thugs."

When al-Qaeda was on the run from Afghanistan crossing through Iran, some were arrested and they are imprisoned. Some of them are charged with some actions in Iran.

It might sound crazy, but filming in a conflict zone, in Afghanistan, and being a female filmmaker was the easy part. I found people open and understanding of the importance and beauty of filmic storytelling. I never had to explain why Jake Bryant, my Director of Photography, and I were climbing up a ladder to get a high shot, or running ahead to get an arrival shot, or filming weeks after weeks, months after months, collecting so much material. The process was respected and honored.

If Bush had read all the documents about the Russians and British in Afghanistan in the 19th century, he would have not done what he did in the 21st. He would have understood how difficult it was to control this territory. He probably didn't read them.

Saying he is in Afghanistan in a spirit of brotherhood, we have also vowed that we will not allow each other's countries, ever, to be used against interests of ours.

We in the west walked away from Afghanistan at the end of the cold war and left it as a country devastated socially and armed to the teeth. If we do that again there will be consequences.