Quotes About Afghanistan

I think all of us who have been in Afghanistan on the ground multiple times know that what we're doing there on the ground is just not sustainable.

It will require a sustained military and financial commitment by the international community, working with the government of Afghanistan, to create the environment in which enduring democratic institutions can be established.

In Afghanistan, I was talking to Afghan elders who were world-weary of a lack of sustained attention from their own government and from the international community to stop problems early.

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.

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.

The acronym ISIS stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. But increasingly, we see that it's not limited there. We see it in Egypt. We see it in Libya. We see it in Afghanistan.

I thanked President Obama for the United States' work in supporting education in Pakistan and Afghanistan and for Syrian refugees.

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.

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

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.

I was overwhelmed with the kindness of people [in Afghanistan] and found that they had managed to retain their dignity, their pride, and their hospitality under unspeakably bleak conditions.

We do know of certain knowledge that he [Osama Bin Laden] is either in Afghanistan, or in some other country, or dead.

The Obama administration went so far as to call a lawful Israeli strike—a strike similar to those that American forces have made hundreds of times in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere—appalling and "disgraceful.

The art of coalition command - whether it is here in Afghanistan, whether it was in Iraq or in Bosnia or in Haiti - is to take the resources you are provided with, understand what the strengths and weaknesses are and to employ them to the best overall effect.

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.

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?

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 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.

A military base in a country like Afghanistan is also a web of relationships, a hub for the local economy, and a key player in the political ecosystem.

Afghanistan can't police its borders, and its neighbors give sanctuary and assistance to insurgents.

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.

When US-led forces toppled the Taliban government in November 2001, Afghans celebrated the downfall of a reviled and discredited regime.

It's true that since 9/11, the application of conventional military rules of engagement has gotten a bit foggy. The Taliban were not an 'enemy state,' but the Canadian Forces conducted its operations in Afghanistan as though the rules of war applied anyway.

When the United States first went into Afghanistan in 2001, it devastated the Taliban and Al Qaeda in a matter of weeks using only a few hundred C.I.A. and Special Operations personnel, backed by American air power. Later, when the United States transitioned to conventional Pentagon stability operations, this success was reversed.