Quotes About Afghanistan

Afghanistan is a country in need. Afghanistan needs to protect itself in the region; Afghanistan needs to secure itself within the country. Afghanistan needs to develop its forces, and Afghanistan needs to provide stability to the people.

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 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.

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.

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.

If today is anything like the typical day of the past 3 years, three American soldiers will die in Iraq or Afghanistan, the Taliban will get a little stronger in Afghanistan and the civil war will continue to be enhanced in Iraq.

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.

Afghanistan has moved forward and Afghanistan will defend itself. And the progress that we have achieved, the Afghan people will not allow it to be put back or reversed.

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.

As a critic, I try to stay neutral about movies before I see them, but I really wanted "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" to be great. It's based on a barbed memoir by Kim Barker called "The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days In Afghanistan And Pakistan." And its stars Tina Fey, out of her comfort zone, just as Barker was a fish out of water when, in 2004, she began covering the Afghanistan occupation for the Chicago Tribune.

There was a time when the women of Afghanistan - at least in Kabul - were out there. They were allowed to study, they were doctors and surgeons, walking free, wearing what they wanted. That was when it was under Soviet occupation. Then the United States starts funding the mujahideen. Reagan called them Afghanistan's "founding fathers." It reincarnates the idea of "jehad," virtually creates the Taliban.

I believe that everyone can appreciate the right of a family to grieve the loss of a loved one in peace, regardless of anyone's position on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

More Medals of Honor were given for the indiscriminate slaughter of women and children than for any battle in World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.

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.

Beside the two wars he inherited in Iraq and Afghanistan, and promised to end, a financial crisis at home had pushed the United States to the brink of another Great Depression. When we spoke with the new president in March of 2009, the economy was losing 800,000 jobs a month, the government was throwing hundreds of billions of dollars at failing banks, and the auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Politically pummeled from all sides, Obama did his best to keep a sense of humor.

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.

Poetry isn't as relevant in the Western world as it is in Afghanistan. And not many people make time for something that doesn't feel relevant.

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

The budgetary cost to the UK of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through 2010 will total more than £18 billion. If we include the social costs the total impact will exceed £20 billion.

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.

Sometimes people say to me, 'Well, what was the difference between Kosovo, which was a successful intervention, and Iraq and Afghanistan that have been so difficult?' And the answer is perfectly simple. In Kosovo, you have, after the removal of the loss of its regime, you had a process of political and economic reconstruction that took its part without the intervention of terrorism. If you had the intervention of terrorism, by the way, it would have been extremely difficult there - but we didn't.

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.

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.

The idea of a permanent U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, as opposed to an economic presence, is going to create a new wave of hostility toward the United States.

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.

I believe in the transformational power of liberty. I believe that the free Iraq is in this nation's interests. I believe a free Afghanistan is in this nation's interest.

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.

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.

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.

It is no secret that many Islamic movements in the Middle East tend to be authoritarian, and some of the so-called 'Islamic regimes' such as Saudi Arabia, Iran - and the worst case was the Taliban in Afghanistan - they are pretty authoritarian. No doubt about that.

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

Inside the White House there were always extreme amounts of doubt about whether they should be escalating in Afghanistan. In fact, most of the president's advisers said, "This is probably not going to work." A lot of people in the military said, "This is probably not going to work."

I hope (the United States) will change and they will now focus entirely on helping and building a stronger, better Afghanistan.

Home. One place is just like another, really. Maybe not. But truth is it's all just rock and dirt and people are roughly the same. I was born up there but I'm no stranger here. Have always felt at home everywhere, even in Virginia, where they hate me. Everywhere you go there's nothing but the same rock and dirt and houses and people and deer and birds. They give it all names, but I'm at home everywhere. Odd thing: unpatriotic. I was at home in England. I would be at home in the desert. In Afghanistan or far Typee. All mine, it all belongs to me. My world.

India has been contributing very much to the reconstruction of Afghanistan; we are strongly engaged there.

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.)

The American administration is trying to achieve any gain in the shadow of the embarrassment hitting it because of its failures in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine after the failure of Israel's war on Lebanon and the retreat of America's project in the region.

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.

Statistics tell us that of the 500,000 people who arrived, those who are granted political asylum are more or less 10 percent. I mean those who are fleeing from war, from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, parts of Nigeria. Welcoming them, in all of these cases, is our duty. For illegals, though, expulsion is needed.

Most liberals I know were for invading Afghanistan right after 9/11.

If you were disabled in Russia, you had to re-register every year, and it took up to six months to re-register, so people who lost limbs in Afghanistan had to prove that their leg hadn't grown back.

You know, I agree with President Obama that in Iraq and Afghanistan, at some point in time, we have to take the training wheels off and we have to allow those countries to stand on their own two feet.

If you look in the Muslim World right now, the Shia, the Sunni Muslims are standing at the brink of a pit of fire started by Western intervention and influence in pitting them against each other by exploiting their divisions. So the stage is set for war in that area of the world that would destroy that area as completely as what they are calling the failed state Libya making Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq failed states.

The spirit of Thanksgiving rests in our recognizing the blessings in our lives, and as we all take stock, I hope you will join me in expressing sincerest thanks to our soldiers serving in harm's way in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world. May God bless you on this day of thanks, and may God protect our troops.

We ought to recognize that we have an offensive responsibility to take the war to the terrorists where they are. That responsibility has waned in the last year as military and intelligence resources were withdrawn from Afghanistan and Pakistan to be used in Iraq.

We don't have this huge footprint, we are less likely to be targeted as, you know, occupiers [in Afghanistan and Iraq].

[Chelsea] Manning leaked more than 700,000 classified files and videos to WikiLeaks about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and U.S. foreign policy.