In this post, you will find great Afghanistan Quotes from famous people, such as Nick Turse, Lakhdar Brahimi, Anand Gopal, Bob Graham, Laura Bush. You can learn and implement many lessons from these quotes.
Secret ops by secret forces have a nasty tendency to produce unintended, unforeseen, and completely disastrous consequences. New Yorkers will remember well the end result of clandestine U.S. support for Islamic militants against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the 1980s: 9/11.
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 That responsibility has waned in the last year as military and intelligence resources were withdrawn from Afghanistan and Pakistan to be used in Iraq.
I personally was involved in going over to Afghanistan to meet the troops. My father was a marine, so that was just amazing.
As I found while leading special operations forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, if the problem is interconnected, your organization must be, as well.
Rebuilding Afghanistan is not going to be solved by pouring billions in. Getting rid of the Taliban does not rid us of the problems of fundamentalism and instability.
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.
I try to get over to Iraq and Afghanistan as much as I can.
Like Vietnam, Afghanistan was never about troop levels; it is about how troops are utilized.
The 9/11 attack itself played out around the world, with planning meetings in Malaysia, operatives taking flight lessons in the United States, coordination by plot leaders based in Hamburg, and money transfers from Dubai – activities overseen by al-Qaeda’s senior command from secure bases in Afghanistan.
I believe in a strong national defense. But it’s my belief that neither Iraq nor Afghanistan poses a threat to national security, and we shouldn’t be involved in either area.
Since Bin Laden’s death, many Americans have decided that our job in Afghanistan is done. They see a victory in the counterterrorism campaign, and are tired of the corruption, confusion and dysfunction of the nation-building campaign.
If wars were won by superior technology alone, the United States would not have been vanquished in Vietnam or waylaid in Afghanistan.
The United States does not view our authority to use military force against Al Qaeda as being restricted solely to ‘hot’ battlefields like Afghanistan.
You know what I had a problem with? The war – the war in Afghanistan.
What I’ve said from the beginning is that I am going to try to help all the vulnerable populations in Afghanistan – and to a certain extent, that’s the majority of Afghanistan.
We live in a world where terror has become a too familiar part of our vocabulary. The terror of 9/11, in which al-Qaeda’s attacks on America launched the nation into three wars – against Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Islamic State.
Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we’re spending in Pakistan, we’re spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?
As the daughter of a 25-year veteran of the armed forces, I am incredibly thankful for the sacrifices our women and men have made in Iraq, and continue to make in Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan, we have had a history of very strong women, and we need to reclaim that history and talk about it.
Many soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from serious, long-term, physical and mental health problems, due to their service. It is unconscionable to cut the already limited health care benefits available to these brave men and women.
Afghanistan is going to be here a long time, and what’s critical is that Afghanistan’s relationship with its neighbors are, to the maximum extent they can be, constructive and operationally useful.
WikiLeaks exposed corruption, war crimes, torture and cover-ups. It showed that we were lied to about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; that the U.S. military had deliberately hidden information about systematic torture and civilian casualties, which were much higher than reported.
It is in their inherent moral components that recent Western strategies may be deficient. What percentage of the populations in countries engaged in the 14-year effort in Afghanistan could even name the three main Taliban groups with whom their soldiers have been engaged?
The war in Afghanistan is too important to be reduced to a political football. We are fighting there to protect our national security. We are confronting the Taliban-led insurgency to prevent terrorists returning to that country.
I am ready to sacrifice everything in completing the unfinished agenda of our noble jihad… until there is no bloodshed in Afghanistan and Islam becomes a way of life for our people.
All the nations that are adjacent to Afghanistan have a vested interest in the future stability and security of Afghanistan.
My mission is to support our service members. They’re volunteers, and if they’re going to go to a hostile place like Afghanistan, I think we owe it to them to back them up and try to help them get through it.
I suggested that we had experience in helping other countries build their military forces, and we would be willing and happy to do the same for Afghanistan, together with the United States.
What President Bush did in his doctrine of preemptive strike and in his war in Afghanistan and in Iraq was to turn even his allies in Europe negatively toward America.
One only has to look at the debacle that has unfolded in Iraq after the withdrawal of U.S. troops at the end of 2011 to have a sneak preview of what could take place in an Afghanistan without some kind of residual American presence.
As far as Afghanistan is concerned, I’m not sure whether the United States and Pakistan have the same objectives. Pakistan would like Afghanistan to be under its control.
I am not going to second-guess my old battlefield comrades from Iraq and Afghanistan; each has his own reason for what he has done.
If there’s ever an example that military power alone cannot be successful in Afghanistan, I think it was the Soviet experience.
There is no doubt that the people of Afghanistan have suffered for a long time. Generations have been lost to terrorism. We empathise with their yearning for peace.
It is imperative that Afghanistan cricket does well. You cannot imagine how passionate Afghanistan’s fans are and how they live and die by every result.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are as much every U.S. citizen‘s wars as they are the veterans‘ wars. If we don’t assume that civilians have just as much ownership and the moral responsibilities that we have as a nation when we embark on something like that, then we’re in a very bad situation.
The war in Afghanistan is underreported.
I am ready to sacrifice everything in completing the unfinished agenda of our noble jihad… until there is no bloodshed in Afghanistan and Islam becomes a way of life for our people.
Lasting peace and security in Iraq and Afghanistan will be achieved when we establish the conditions for democratic, economically viable nations.
We live in a world where terror has become a too familiar part of our vocabulary. The terror of 9/11, in which al-Qaeda’s attacks on America launched the nation into three wars – against Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Islamic State.
There are tens of thousands of interactions every single day across Afghanistan between the Afghan troops and International Security Assistance Force. On most of those, every single day we continue to deepen and broaden the relationship we seek.
As you know, I did not support the United States’ engagement in Iraq and have long had concerns about Afghanistan… But I obviously have always been 100 percent supportive of our military.
When you decide to get involved in a military operation in a place like Syria, you’ve got to be prepared, as we learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, to become the government, and I’m not sure any country, either the United States or I don’t hear of anyone else, who’s willing to take on that responsibility.
I’ve spent 7 Christmases in Iraq and Afghanistan with WWE.
I thanked President Obama for the United States’ work in supporting education in Pakistan and Afghanistan and for Syrian refugees.
A significant U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan has been continuous since October 2001, and President Obama’s short-lived ‘surge‘ in 2009 was a continuation of his predecessor‘s buildup there.
My go-to gifts are scarves from my friend Matin Maulawizada’s nonprofit organization, Afghan Hands, which supports disenfranchised women in Afghanistan. In exchange for their beautiful embroidery, the women are given financial aid and classes in math and literacy. The scarves are all stunning and one of a kind.
I mean Afghanistan is a very rugged, complicated country.
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.
You know, if I were an – if I were a Taliban, I’d say, ‘What did al-Qaida ever do for me except get me kicked out of Afghanistan?’
When news of the first plane’s hitting the World Trade Center reached them, bin Laden’s followers exploded with joy. But shrewder members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan realized that the attacks might not be the stunning victory that bin Laden, and many in the West, took them to be.
No officer wants to be involved in a justified use of force proven unnecessary after the fact, any more than soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan wanted to make what proved to be the wrong decision in a shoot-don’t-shoot situation. Those decisions, even if justified, live with you forever, believe me.
I was kidnapped by Sunni insurgents near Fallujah, in Iraq, ambushed by the Taliban in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan, and injured in a car accident that killed my driver while covering the Taliban occupation of the Swat Valley in Pakistan.
Losing their reproductive rights is the first step to how women live in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan.
Clay Hunt was the kind of individual that has made America a great country. In 2005, when his country needed him, he enlisted in the Marine Corps. Shot in Iraq, he earned a Purple Heart, and after he recuperated, he graduated from Marine Corps Scout Sniper School and was deployed to Afghanistan.
We haven’t been out in many of these countries helping them build infrastructure. How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that, rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan?
We can’t stay in Afghanistan forever.
In 2001, I was an Air Force lieutenant colonel and A-10 fighter pilot stationed in Saudi Arabia, in charge of rescue operations for no-fly enforcement in Iraq and then in Afghanistan.
While my mother is from Jammu, my father was originally from Afghanistan, as my grandfather was the governor of five provinces there, including Herat.
What President Bush did in his doctrine of preemptive strike and in his war in Afghanistan and in Iraq was to turn even his allies in Europe negatively toward America.
I’m also working with Mrs. Bush on some education projects in Afghanistan, so I get to see her a great deal.
On military battlefields, we have defeated radical Islamic forces every time we have seriously gone after them, from Iraq to Afghanistan.
Involvement in Afghanistan, I thought, was totally warranted. We were attacked, we attacked back, but after six months of being in Afghanistan, I thought we had pretty well effectively wiped out al Qaeda.
The U.S. is friends with dictatorial regimes, then invades places like Iraq and Afghanistan, and what happens afterwards is a catastrophe. In the place of their leaders, fundamentalist movements that use the name of Islam spring up, and all that’s left is terror and bloodshed.
At the end of any peace deal, the decision-maker will be the government of Afghanistan.
It is clear that while our Army was engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq, Russia studied U.S. capabilities and vulnerabilities and embarked on an ambitious and largely successful modernization effort.
Women in Afghanistan do not ask the United States to stay for the simple or sentimental reason of safeguarding their rights. They are the first ones to say that this is not enough of a reason for the world’s remaining superpower to remain in their country.
I think it’s absolutely fascinating that in Berlin the parliament can discuss actively the role of their soldiers in Afghanistan because is it still possible, literally, for a German soldier to take up arms.
We want an Afghanistan that is shaped by the dreams of the great Afghan people, not by irrational fears and overreaching ambitions of others.
In my generation, thankfully, as somebody who served in the Afghanistan War, would have served in the Iraq War, if called to do so – was also strongly against the Iraq War, from the beginning – I’m so thankful that we live in a moment that we can honor the troops separately from policy.
I was a war correspondent and journalist for a long time, and I was very near the towers on 9/11 and very shortly after in Afghanistan.
During the 19th century, Britain fought two wars in unsuccessful attempts to subjugate the Afghans. When Britain finally drew a border between India and Afghanistan in 1893, Pashtun tribes in southern Afghanistan were cut off from related tribes across the border in what was then India and is now Pakistan.
Afghan society is very complex, and Afghanistan has a very complex culture. Part of the reason it has remained unknown is because of this complexity.
I want to say that I can be Moroccan and speak about someone without speaking about his nationality. Because, you know, I have the feeling that when you come from Morocco, when you come from Afghanistan, when you come from Africa, Occidental people always wait for you to write a novel about identity.
I didn’t vote for Bush, and I’m not happy particularly that he’s president. But I will say I’m impressed that he didn’t start bombing Afghanistan the day after Sept. 11. The more time that passes without him bombing Afghanistan, the more I respect him.
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.
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.
Sure, there’s pressure when you have one dart at double top when there’s a world ‘championship to be won, but real ‘pressure is what our troops are doing in ‘Afghanistan.
In reality, Afghanistan has functioned as a nation-state for more than two centuries, and its army and bureaucracy reach back to the 19th century.
The first boots on the ground in Afghanistan were my colleagues.
India will continue to support Afghanistan in all possible ways.
Since the intervention in Afghanistan, we suddenly began to notice when, in political discussions, we found ourselves only among Europeans or Israelis.
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.
When we look around the world today, when we see in Afghanistan that 10 million people have registered to vote in their upcoming elections, including 40 percent of those people are women, that’s just unbelievable.
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.
For me, it’s an honor for the military to ask me to go to Iraq, Afghanistan, or GITMO. I’m happy to go.
Well, first, the situation in Afghanistan is much better than it was. But there is no comparison between Afghanistan and Iraq. Iraq has a bureaucracy, Iraq has wealth. Iraq has an educated class of people who are positioned to come in and take over.
I mean Afghanistan is a very rugged, complicated country.
You could get a cheer by saying: ‘Let’s withdraw from Afghanistan’, but I don’t think that’s where the public’s at. It wouldn’t be responsible.
In many respects, Afghanistan represents a more difficult problem set. It does not have a number of the blessings that Iraq has in terms of the oil, gas, land of two rivers, the human capital that Iraq built up over the years, the muscle memory of a strong government – albeit one that was corrupted over time.
If American forces leave Afghanistan, the Taliban is going to do what to America? Don’t say you’re worried about what they will do to the Afghan people. If that was America’s concern, America’s operational presence there would be much different.
I think the emancipation of women in Afghanistan has to come from inside, through Afghans themselves, gradually, over time.
Safety and security are the most basic job of government. I understand that – both as a mayor who works every day to secure public safety and reduce crime, and also as someone who deployed in uniform to Afghanistan because I believed joining the military was part of my duty to help keep my country safe.
The administration has a disturbing pattern of behavior when it comes to budgeting not only for the ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan but also for military requirements not directly related to these conflicts.
Security services, from Afghanistan to the United States, should be alert throughout the Ramadan period, but especially on the 27th day of the holy month.
As far as Iraq, the important thing is that the Taliban is gone in Afghanistan, three-quarters of the al-Qaida leadership is either dead or in jail, and we now have Saudi Arabia working with us, Pakistan working with us.
Certainly the existence of these huge nuclear force was important for the ultimate confrontation, let’s say, over western Europe. You just can’t use them to deal with a situation like Afghanistan.
I have never believed you go to war in Iraq, you go to war in Afghanistan, and believe that you can deal with those battlefields, those countries, in microcosms, or narrow channels.
The Helmand area used to be the breadbasket of Afghanistan. There was a time when a substantial number of the grapes we ate came from Afghanistan.
The mission – the overall mission is to dismantle and defeat and disrupt al-Qaeda. But we have to make sure there’s not a safe haven that returns in Afghanistan.
There isn’t, even now, a great tradition of novel-writing in Afghanistan. Most of the literature is in the form of poetry.
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.
Andrew Warren was a rarity in the CIA’s Clandestine Service – African-American, fluent in Arabic, and relatively young for an agent who’d already spent nearly a decade chasing terrorists in Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq and Algeria, so deep undercover that few of his friends or family knew the nature of his work.
I said if you want me to go back to Afghanistan and work, I’m happy to do that. If you think accepting my resignation is best for the cause and for the nation, then I have no complaint with that.
While researching ‘Horse Soldiers,’ I conducted over 100 interviews in the U.S. and in Afghanistan, and in Afghanistan, I walked and studied key sites that appear in the book. I was able to capture not only the Americans’ point of view but the Afghans’ as well.
Whether you are a stay-at-home mum, or on the red carpet, or in Afghanistan, the better you feel, the better you do your job.
Hurtling the Pentagon into an unprecedented budgetary meltdown is horrifically irresponsible. Obama doesn’t care. This is war – not against the Taliban, but war against the GOP. He has Republicans on the ropes, and that’s a victory he savors and desires – unlike Afghanistan, where he seems only to want to turn tail.
During the Cold War, America undertook serious military cuts only once: after the election of Richard Nixon, during the Vietnam War. The result: Vietnam fell to the Communists, the Russians moved into Afghanistan, and American influence around the globe waned dramatically.
Right now we’re on the President Obama plan, and we’ll stay with that. And from my perspective, the reason we’re there is to make sure that we can achieve the principal goal which is ensure that Afghanistan can never become a safe haven for a terrorist organization like al Qaeda.
Eighty-five percent cannot read when they enter the security forces of Afghanistan. Why? Because the Taliban withheld education during the period of time in which these men and women would have learned to read.
I know now that what countries do at summits has the power to help girls in Pakistan, Nigeria or Afghanistan.
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.
The high probability is if American forces withdraw from Afghanistan and if no alternative international arrangement is made that then the historic contests between the regions and the sects will reappear, the Taliban will re-emerge, and a very complicated and maybe chaotic situation will develop.
Rebuilding Afghanistan is not going to be solved by pouring billions in. Getting rid of the Taliban does not rid us of the problems of fundamentalism and instability.
But I knew that what had happened was an eye-opener not only to the United States but also to Pakistan, who realized that after what has happened on the 11th of September, it was simply impossible to continue to play those games in Afghanistan.
In combat operations in places like Afghanistan, we often confronted the specter of dangerous people with powerful weapons who were a threat to their community and to our soldiers. Our aim was to quickly determine who in that community was a legitimate actor who could be trusted with a firearm and who was not.
Especially right after 9/11. Especially when the war in Afghanistan is going on. There was a real sense that you don’t get that critical of a government that’s leading us in war time.
The Huffingtonpost.com does not pay its writers. Tina Brown‘s thedailybeast.com does pay its writers. You have to be paid because this is not a hobby. You have to keep that standard. You can’t ask grandpa to loan you money because you have to go to Afghanistan. I walked the picket line for that to continue.
In the years leading up to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, thinking about defense was driven by ideas that regarded successful military operations as ends in themselves rather than just one instrument of power that must be coordinated with others to achieve – and sustain – political goals.
As you will recall, soon after the 9/11 attacks, an international coalition led by the United States conducted an impressive campaign to defeat the Taliban, al Qaeda, and other associated extremist groups in Afghanistan.
By the time the United States went to war with Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, I had made three trips to the country. I covered the fall of the Taliban in Kandahar and have been returning routinely for the past 14 years.
If Iraq and Afghanistan have taught us anything in recent history, it is the unpredictability of war and that these things are easier to get into than to get out of, and, frankly, the facile way in which too many people talk about, ‘Well, let’s just go attack them.’
It is very clear that the people in Afghanistan do not want the Taliban back.
I suggested that we had experience in helping other countries build their military forces, and we would be willing and happy to do the same for Afghanistan, together with the United States.
We don’t see that the Taliban ultimately can succeed, and it’s a combination both of what the international community can do to support Afghanistan, not just in the short term, but over the long term.
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.
I’m from a generation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Our battleground was where we learned. It’s not like the old generation where they used to train and train and train, and then suddenly an operation would come up, and they’d go on it.
President Karzai’s regime is not perfect. There are problems of improving governance. But you cannot transform Afghanistan overnight. It is going to be a long-term affair.
In all the debate about Afghanistan, we don’t hear much about our obligation to the wretched lives of Afghan women. They are being treated as collateral damage as the big boys discuss geopolitical goals.
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.
I’ve been to Afghanistan and Iraq a few times, and then I’ve done deployments elsewhere – with Special Forces, we go all over the place.
The U.S. might have diminished al-Qaeda’s capabilities in the border region of Pakistan and Afghanistan, but it has not diminished the threat from radical Islamist terrorists as a whole.
It is the responsibility of Afghanistan’s new government to gain better control over the country’s administration and to resolutely fight the drug trade and corruption.
In Afghanistan, the viceroy approach would reduce rampant fraud by focusing spending on initiatives that further the central strategy, rather than handing cash to every outstretched hand from a U.S. system bereft of institutional memory.
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.
I mean, the United States has had an eighteen-year military commitment in Afghanistan, and frankly, I can’t think of any country other than the United States which is even capable of such a commitment.
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.
Look, I think the public generally understands that what’s at stake in Afghanistan is American security, number one.
When I arrived in the summer of 2009 to command the war in Afghanistan, I entered an effort that was failing. Many Afghans, some ISAF coalition members, and much of the American public had lost confidence in both the trajectory of the war and our ability to correct it.
A military or government hierarchy is anathema to the dispersed population and diverse tribes of mountainous Afghanistan.
Whether you are a stay-at-home mum, or on the red carpet, or in Afghanistan, the better you feel, the better you do your job.
We have been helping, trying to help Afghanistan in many ways, even from the beginning of… the beginnings of the ’20s, 1920s, when he we were fighting our own national struggle.
Whether I’m trying to figure out what the U.S. military is doing in Latin America or Africa, Afghanistan or Qatar, the response is remarkably uniform – obstruction and obfuscation, hurdles and hindrances. In short, the good old-fashioned military runaround.
The terrorist attacks of September 11th and the courageous actions of our armed forces in Afghanistan and Iraq remind us that friends of tyranny and enemies of freedom still exist.
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.
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.
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’re in danger of breaking our army and preventing our national leaders from having the flexibility to confront not just Iraq and Afghanistan, but crises around the globe.
I watched the Bush administration overreact to the Clinton administration, who believed they did too much nation building, sustaining other countries, and that’s why we never put the commitment on Afghanistan and Iraq that should have been in there under their policy leadership.
Afghanistan is developing its infrastructure to come up with a new direction of connectivity through energy transmission and modernisation of transport sector in an effort to cater to needs of modern day age.
In my 20 years as a photographer, covering conflicts from Bosnia to Gaza to Iraq to Afghanistan, injured civilians and soldiers have passed through my life many times.
Afghanistan has the capacity to become an industrialized country because of its mining and agriculture sectors. We can also create jobs for educated men and women by investing in information technology.
I’ve been in a position before where a president has turned to me in the Oval Office in a difficult moment, without any pleasantries, and said, ‘I’m asking you as your president and Commander in Chief to take command of the international security force in Afghanistan.’ The only response can be, ‘Yes, Mr. President.’
We are particularly interested in the mental health programs and policies that support our troops and their families before, during, and after deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan.
My first assignment was 12 weeks in Afghanistan. After that, I covered the Indian election for two months. Then I got a phone call saying, ‘Hey, we want you in Brazil,’ and the same happened for Somalia.
My sense is that General Kayani recognises that a stable and secure Afghanistan is in the best interests of Pakistan.
The war in Afghanistan is too important to be reduced to a political football. We are fighting there to protect our national security. We are confronting the Taliban-led insurgency to prevent terrorists returning to that country.
We cannot continue to ask the brave men and women of our Armed Forces to put their lives on the line to protect our country while we jeopardize their safety by failing to ensure that Defense Department funds are not siphoned off to warlords in Afghanistan.
They say Afghanistan is the worst country for a girl to be born. Hogwash!
We are not in Afghanistan because girls were not allowed to go to school, but helping them do so will give the Afghan people hope for a better future.
If we can’t understand the Afghan family, we can’t understand Afghanistan.
Consequences of linear thinking in Afghanistan and Iraq included overestimating indigenous forces’ capabilities, underestimating the enemy, and the associated expectation that the coalition could soon reduce force levels and shift to an exclusively advisory effort.
Like Obama, President Trump has utilized military strikes, albeit in a limited fashion. Nevertheless, he has invaded no new countries and worked steadfastly to end the two-decade-long war in Afghanistan.
As Michael Scheuer, who ran the C.I.A.’s bin Laden unit until 1999, has pointed out, if bin Laden believed in Christmas, the Iraq war would be his perfect present from Santa Claus. The 9/11 attacks and the subsequent war in Afghanistan severely damaged bin Laden’s organization.
What bin Laden had hoped to achieve in Afghanistan in the post-9/11 period, which was to drag the United States into a protracted guerrilla war like the one he had fought against the Soviets, never happened. Instead, that protracted guerrilla war is now playing out in Iraq, in the heart of the Middle East.
Photography of any living being, according to Taliban rule, was illegal. So when I went to Afghanistan, immediately I was worried about photographing people. But it was what I wanted: to show what life was like under the Taliban, specifically for women.
The war on terror is the war in Afghanistan.
To leave Afghanistan as a playground for terrorists and adventurers was simply not possible anymore.
Well Australia’s been in Afghanistan from the get go, way back in 2001, but we have been resolute throughout and with support from both sides of Australian politics.
I think we need to get the measurements that Congress has mandated from the White House on how we’re going to determine progress in Afghanistan.
I had earlier concluded that a war with Iraq would be a distraction from the successful and expeditious completion of our aims in Afghanistan. Now I had come to question whether the White House was telling the truth.
I signed up for military service in the months following 9/11, and later, as a military intelligence officer, I felt called, like so many others, to volunteer for deployment and service in Afghanistan.
Gen. Tommy Franks told me the war was being compromised as specialized personnel and equipment were being shifted from Afghanistan to prepare for the war in Iraq – a war more than a year away.
Central to achieving progress in Afghanistan – and to setting the conditions necessary to transition security tasks from the international community to the Afghan government – is increasing the size and capability of ANSF.
In a place like Afghanistan where the society is completely segregated, women have access to women. Men cannot always photograph women and cannot get the access that I get.
I know what it’s like to feel the fear of battle. To be constantly looking over my shoulder and thinking every sound might be a bomb or a bullet. When I served in Afghanistan in 2009 I felt that fear, but I made a choice to serve in the army and I knew I could come home to safety at the end of my tour.
Anyone who’s traveled with me to Afghanistan knows why I love this book: ‘War,’ by Sebastian Junger.
The fact is that Germany is taking on its responsibility in the world – in the fight against IS, but also in the Middle East, in Africa and in Afghanistan.
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.
Another part of the global war on terrorism that Canada and the United States are working on together is in helping failed states, states like Afghanistan, where people have no voice.
The experts who managed the original Marshall Plan say Afghanistan needs a commitment of at least $5 to $10 billion over 5 to 10 years, coupled with occupation forces of 250,000 Allied soldiers to keep the peace throughout the country.
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.
Continued public and private sector partnership with multilateral and bilateral organizations to support policies that encourage the proliferation of broadband access is essential if Afghanistan is to see the kind of social and economic progress its people deserve.
The terrorist attacks of September 11th and the courageous actions of our armed forces in Afghanistan and Iraq remind us that friends of tyranny and enemies of freedom still exist.
I’m saying 9/11 was to get us into Iraq and get us into Afghanistan.
A few weeks after the planes hit the World Trade Center, I applied for a direct commission in the U.S. Army Reserve and ultimately served three active duty tours, including overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan. Really, my whole family served three tours.
When I was in Iraq and Afghanistan, I never once turned to someone before a raid on a house and said, ‘Hey, man, are you a Democrat or a Republican?’
We all know that, unfortunately, the media does not always portray the good things that are happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, and this will be a great opportunity for us to glean some information from the Iraqi women who are here for us to also take back to our constituents.
Afghanistan’s geographical location gives it the opportunity to become one of the biggest transit routes in the region. It can connect Southern, Eastern and Central Asia to the Middle East.
Nevertheless, I do know that we are part of a danger zone, we have military operations in Afghanistan and we’re training the Iraqi police force. The terrorists also have us in their sights.
The Taliban has not, in my judgment, in any significant way changed their fundamental goal and objective, which is to take over Afghanistan and return to running that country. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have negotiation talks with them. I think we should. But we’ve got to be clear-eyed about it.
I have a pretty amazing life. Even back-to-back deployments – Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey – it’s still pretty rewarding.
I went to Afghanistan in ’96 to write about terrorist training camps south of Jalalabad and Tora Bora, in the mountains. I was there right before the Taliban took over, literally a few weeks before they took Kabul. The frontline wasn’t terribly active, but it was definitely there. And they swept into power.
I wanted to continue doing my work, but I had to figure out how. And so what I have basically come up with is that I still go to Afghanistan and Iraq and South Sudan and many of these places that are rife with war, but I don’t go directly to the front line.
I recognize that most Americans are tired of U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan after more than 18 years of war. I am, too.
No one argues that we should have imposed a dictatorship in Afghanistan having liberated the country. Similarly, we weren’t about to impose a dictatorship in Iraq having liberated the country.
I try to get over to Iraq and Afghanistan as much as I can.
There is a difference between a military mission and the aspiration for the long-term plans for the country. What we want is a stable enough Afghanistan, able to look after its own security so we can leave without the fear of it imploding… But let’s be clear – it’s not going to be perfect.
The big risk to British lives in 2013 is in Afghanistan. Our troops, diplomats and aid workers have made a big contribution there. But while there is an end date for Western engagement, 2014, there isn’t a proper end game.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are not mere neighbours, we are more than that, we are connected by Muslim bond of brotherhood.
When I’m documenting, for example, a story on women in Afghanistan, I will do a huge amount of research and a lot of time on the ground just getting to know the women before I even start shooting.
In the years leading up to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, thinking about defense was driven by ideas that regarded successful military operations as ends in themselves rather than just one instrument of power that must be coordinated with others to achieve – and sustain – political goals.
There’s no country in the world that’s more devastated from natural resources than Afghanistan.
It is in American and Afghan interests for the U.S. to stay in Afghanistan so it doesn’t turn into Iraq circa 2014, with the Taliban controlling much of the country while hosting a strong presence of ISIS and al-Qaeda as well as every other jihadist group of note.
We didn’t do anything wrong, but among the lessons learned, given the magnitude of the problems we now face in Afghanistan, a major U.S. force on the ground would convince the world we were in for the long-haul recovery of a country devastated by 21 years of warfare.
The United States can’t impose democracies. We can’t impose our will. The Russians found that out in Afghanistan.
As for the United States’ future in Afghanistan, it will be fire and hell and total defeat, God willing, as it was for their predecessors – the Soviets and, before them, the British.
During the Cold War, America undertook serious military cuts only once: after the election of Richard Nixon, during the Vietnam War. The result: Vietnam fell to the Communists, the Russians moved into Afghanistan, and American influence around the globe waned dramatically.
Peace cannot come without the government of Afghanistan speaking directly to the Taliban or the Taliban talking directly to us.
I want the troops from Great Britain and the U.S. to be successful, but by the same token, Afghanistan has always been a screw-up.
The case of Afghanistan vs. the Soviet Union is the clearest case of good against evil that I’ve seen in my lifetime. I thought it was terrific the way they got their country back.
In 2012, I got hit by an IED in Afghanistan.
