Quotes About Afghanistan

America does not hold to the colonial tradition. America came, liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban and al-Qaida, came to an arrangement with Hamid Karzai, wanted to organize elections as soon as possible and then withdraw. The Bush administration thought that once there is a democracy, everything else will fall into place. If today you speak to the architects of the 2001 Afghanistan Conference in Bonn, they will tell you that instead of being fixated on elections, we should have built a State in Afghanistan with an army and a police force first.

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.

Afghanistan will be a brother of Pakistan. Afghanistan will never betray a brother

There [in Afghanistan ] is a tremendous need for selter. So I am focusing most of the efforts of the foundation to building shelters for refugees in northern Afghanistan and we have already begun doing so.

Everyone in Afghanistan and Pakistan is a potential target. My heart goes out to the UN family in Afghanistan: in spite of everything, they are showing fortitude. But they will need the support of the whole world at this difficult time.

We know definitively that Al-Qaida isn't all over Afghanistan anymore. According to CIA estimates, there are less than a hundred Al-Qaida members in the entire country. Most of them are in Pakistan. So, it's hard for me to understand why we're still fighting there and sending in more and more troops. I would get out of Afghanistan as quickly as possible.

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.

Iraq at one time was actually a functioning government. It's a real state. Afghanistan is not Iraq. It's tribal. It's got a different - a number of different sects, never really had a solid government there running the country on any kind of a continuing basis. Well, to rebuild the nation of Afghanistan is going to be more difficult than rebuilding the nation of Iraq.

The West has been able to bring Afghanistan a much better health service, better education, better roads, a better economy, though some have benefited more; some have benefited less from that economic well-being in Afghanistan.

It would be very hard to bring a wife to Afghanistan. In America, I'd have no problem with her doing whatever she wanted, but in Afghanistan, that's not the case.

Four years ago, I promised to end the war in Iraq. We did. I promised to refocus on the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11. We have. We've blunted the Taliban's momentum in Afghanistan, and in 2014, our longest war will be over. A new tower rises above the New York skyline, al Qaeda is on the path to defeat, and Osama bin Laden is dead.

I supported the war in Afghanistan because 3000 of our people were murdered and I thought we had a right to defend the people of the United States.

The U.S. couldn't play a military role in different areas like Iraq and Afghanistan without huge quantities of oil. So a shortage or disruption in oil would not only damage the U.S. economy; it would undercut American military supremacy.

By releasing these five top Taliban commanders, the U.S. is demonstrating that it is throwing in the towel in the long struggle against the Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies in Afghanistan.

President Obama continues to support war. He continues to remove many basic civil liberties and human rights. He continues to condone drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan that kill women and children. He meets with his advisers every Tuesday morning and signs extrajudicial killings. To me, those are not the actions of a peace person.

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.

Could Afghanistan become another Vietnam? Is the United States facing another stalemate on the other side of the world? Premature the questions may be, three weeks after the fighting began. Unreasonable they are not, given the scars scoured into the national psyche by defeat in Southeast Asia. For all the differences between the two conflicts, and there are many, echoes of Vietnam are unavoidable.

Wars always evolve over time, don't they? Iraq/Afghanistan is different than Vietnam, and Vietnam was different than Korea, and Korea was different than World War One, and so on. Some things remain the same, of course - one side fighting another over ideology or a patch of ground - but there are some aspects of combat life which differ radically than their predecessors.

There're some places that are more difficult or dangerous to navigate and I wouldn't look forward to going back. Like I'd much rather go back to Afghanistan - which fascinates me - quicker than I'd go back to spend a week walking around Nairobi, Kenya, which is a great and easy way to get yourself killed.

When I read about women living under the Taliban, I really wanted to travel there and see for myself: Is it that bad? What is the situation? I remember the night before I left for my trip, I called my mom and said, "I'm going to Afghanistan tomorrow."

Our presence in Afghanistan is not worth the price of any more American lives or treasure.

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.

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.

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

The Islamists had control over territory that was about half the size of the Federal Republic of Germany. For years, we have been putting the lives of our troops on the line, we have taken huge losses and the Europeans cut the budget? If money is more important than the lives of our children, what else is this than the usual arrogance and superficiality? And where is all this terror coming from? It is a result of mistakes the West committed in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the 1980s, when they armed the Islamic rebels against the Soviet troops.

When I became secretary of state, we had 200,000 troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I'm very grateful that we have brought home the vast majority of those.

The events of September 11 and what has happened since have made people understand that even a small, distant and far away country like Afghanistan cannot be left to break up into anarchy and chaos without consequences for the whole world.

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.

Whether you are a stay-at-home mom, or on the red carpet, or in Afghanistan, the better you feel, the better you do your job.

I did an embed in Afghanistan on the Pakistan border in 2008. One of the things you realize when you're talking to low-ranking enlisted men is that no one listens to them. So when I showed up they loved having someone to talk to. That's a real privilege for me. The guys on the ground are the guys I care about. I've had the most satisfaction telling their stories. There is trust and there is stuff that you learn to hold back, especially when you're dealing with younger guys or lower ranking officers. That's different from the top brass who are basically just politicians anyway.

It seems not to matter that we are at the brink of a war that may spread beyond Afghanistan and Iraq to Iran and Georgia and then where? To Syria? To North Korea? To China? That we in America are in economic doldrums and are seeing small businesses fold and houses reclaimed by banks and a smouldering panic that is palpable everywhere.

I just think it would be unrealistic to suggest we're going to eliminate every last domestic insurgent in Afghanistan. Certainly, the history of the country would indicate that's not a very realistic objective, and I think we have to have realistic objectives.

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.

We can no longer apply the classic criteria to clearly determine whether and when we should use military force. We are waging war in Afghanistan, for example, but it's an asymmetrical war where the enemies are criminals instead of soldiers.

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 continue to stand united with Germany and our NATO allies in our ongoing efforts to build peace and stability in Afghanistan.

While I disagree with our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, I have nothing but respect and admiration for the men and women deployed in these places.

It is in line with the fundamental interests of the two peoples for China and Afghanistan to strengthen a strategic and cooperative partnership, which is also conducive to regional peace, stability and development.

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.

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.

Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terrorism have reduced the pace of military transformation and have revealed our lack of preparation for defensive and stability operations. This Administration has overextended our military.

In Afghanistan, there is a plan to build democracy; hundreds of thousands of troops are protecting it. There is a plan to rebuild and reconstruct there. But many thousands of Americans die from violence and poverty every year and we don't have a plan for reconstruction at home.

Democrats are channeling their frustration with America's imminent military victory in Afghanistan into hysterical opposition to reasonable national security measures at home. (Incidentally, this ought to prove once and for all what a bunch of paper tigers the Russians are. What were they doing over there for 10 years? It hasn't taken us 10 weeks.)

President Obama has said that our aspirations should be realistic. We are not going to turn one of the poorest countries in the world, that was plunged into 30 years of war, into an advanced, industrialized, Western-style democracy. What we want to achieve is Afghanistan's capacity to secure and govern itself.

Too often in the past, our Armed Forces have returned to Canada from their trials with little fanfare. Not so today. Canadians across the country came out in force, united in appreciation, to honour the bravery, heroism, strength and sacrifice of those who fought for freedom and security in Afghanistan.

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.

We are so appreciative of the men and women in uniform who are protecting us, whether in Afghanistan or Iraq or on ships around the world. For our security, they are taking the offensive to the terrorists overseas.

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.