Quotes About Afghanistan

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?'

Afghanistan. Afghanistan is named after the biblical King Saul's grandson. Afghana, according to legend, which has traditionally described the Afghanistan people as Ben-i-Israel, "Children of Israel." Legend also has it that King Solomon' (Sulaiman) settled the country. Whether such stories, and many more, are true or not, they are widely believed, and the country does bear Afghana's name.

If there's ever an example that military power alone cannot be successful in Afghanistan, I think it was the Soviet experience.

whom we betrayed and sold down the river when we left Afghanistan, leaving them and their families to the mercy of the victors.

Tanks could not solve what was essentially a political problem. If the revolution in Afghanistan could only be sustained with Soviet bayonets, that was a route down which the Soviet Union should not go.

It was perfectly clear that Afghanistan was not ripe for socialism: religion was a tremendous force, the peasants were almost completely illiterate, the economy was backward. Lenin had set out the necessary elements of a revolutionary situation. None were present in Afghanistan.

Enemies can be confronted only if they are first brought to earth. And that means bringing them to earth somewhere, as the Americans brought al-Qa'eda to earth in Afghanistan. Globalization may have made it harder to defend ourselves against terrorist assaults, but we are nevertheless defending territory, the place where we are, and hunting down our enemies in the place where they are.

The Soviets had lost fifteen thousand lives and suffered more than thirty thousand casualties. Between a million and two million Afghans perished, perhaps 90 percent of them civilians. Villages were razed, crops and livestock destroyed, the landscape studded with mines. A third of the population sheltered in refugee camps in Pakistan or Iran.

From my films, you can at least learn about Iran, you can get a sense of the history and the society. But no such films have been made about Afghanistan, so you really can't know much about it.

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.

Afghanistan. And then there's Ã¢â'¬Â¦Ã¢â'¬Â He consulted the letter again. "Michael Longley, the poet—he'll be there too. And there are lots of others." Irene looked thoughtful. "It starts in two days' time," said Stuart. "It's a bit rushed, but Ã¢â'¬Â¦

This began in earnest with the Real Time Regional Gateway program [RTRG], implemented in Iraq and then in Afghanistan to vacuum up all possible information. The ethos of RTRG appeared in the U.S. in the form of the PRISM data-mining program. Americans were scandalized to learn from .

Letters have time, time costs nothing in these parts-let's return to the melons and peaches of Afghanistan.

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.

I'm also working with Mrs. Bush on some education projects in Afghanistan, so I get to see her a great deal.

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.

As we begin to leave Afghanistan, are we fooling ourselves about what we are leaving behind or what we have promised the people of Afghanistan? Especially the women and girls?

If we end up with war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran at the same time, can anyone see a more damaging prospect for America's world role than that?

I think the central mission in Afghanistan right now is to protect the people, certainly, and that would be inclusive of everybody, and that in a, in an insurgency and a counterinsurgency, that's really the center of gravity.

Protecting Afghan civilians is the cornerstone of our mission.

The attacks of 9/11 came out of Afghanistan. It was a failed state, a rogue nation. That's why al Qaeda was there in the first place.

An interim government was set up in Afghanistan. It included two women, one of whom was Minister of Women's Affairs. Man, who'd she have to show her ankles to to get that job?

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.

There's a tendency to look at anybody who joined the military as if they underwrote everything that happened policy-wise. That's not really the case. I have a friend who both protested the Iraq War and joined the military, and ended up serving two deployments in Afghanistan.