Now, al Qaeda’s on the run. Afghanistan is no longer a base of operations. The Afghan government is a friendly government that is trying to bring democracy to its people.
When we get peace in Afghanistan, we’ll go to New Zealand to learn best practices for raising sheep. We’ll go to Switzerland and study hydroelectric projects.
I definitely pack coffee if I’m going someplace where it might not be available. When I went to Afghanistan in 2011, I brought a bunch of instant coffee. I didn’t need to do that, of course, because army people drink industrial-strength coffee and have it going 24/7.
It was essentially for self defence that we went to war in Afghanistan and would go to war in Iraq.
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 United States of America, justifiably and proudly, went to war in Afghanistan in early winter of 2001. The United States invaded Iraq on a false premise in the spring of 2003.
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.
My last passport, I had North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Liberia, Guinea… I had, like, every war-torn country in there.
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.
Fiction is a very powerful tool for teaching history. The Philippines was the first Iraq, the first Vietnam, the first Afghanistan, in the sense that it was the United States’ initial or baptismal experience in nation-building.
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?’
Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on earth. Security issue or no security issue, there would need to be a focus on it.
Keeping a relatively small, predominantly U.S. Special Forces presence in Afghanistan to continue to train the Afghan army past December 2016 is a wise policy that would benefit both Afghans and Americans.
Some have called Afghanistan ‘the graveyard of empires,’ and it probably is the graveyard of empires.
If you sit down with British officers or British senior NCOs, they understand the sweep of history. They know the history of British forces not just in Afghanistan but the history of British successful counter-insurgencies – Northern Ireland, Malaysia.
In many parts of the world, especially Pakistan and Afghanistan, terrorism, war and conflict stop children to go to their schools. We are really tired of these wars. Women and children are suffering.
A fly cannot go in unless it stops somewhere; therefore weapons, fuel, food, money will not go to Afghanistan unless the neighbors of Afghanistan are working, are cooperating, either being themselves the origin or the transit.
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.
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.
Look at Iraq; look at Afghanistan, where at great personal physical risk people have gone to the polls and have rejected the appeal from Bin Laden and his allies to stay at home.
My time in war zones have been fleeting and infrequent. I’ve been to Iraq. I’ve been to Afghanistan. I’ve been to other places where I’ve collected hazardous duty pay.
Against the wishes of my family, I gave up my legal career, and I volunteered for the Army. I became an infantryman. I went to Iraq and Afghanistan.
I’m not good at explaining why I walked across Afghanistan.
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.
The legal system in Afghanistan is very immature and porous.
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.
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.
People in Afghanistan want peace, including the Taliban. They’re also people like we all are. They have families, they have relatives, they have children, they are suffering a tough time.
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.
Canada is preparing to play a major role in the continued stability and security of Afghanistan through ISAF.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, our soldiers signed up intentionally. That’s a huge difference from the largely conscripted army of my era.
We can’t afford to see Afghanistan roll backwards into a failed state that could become a base from which terrorist campaigns can be launched anywhere in the world.
We want an Afghanistan that is shaped by the dreams of the great Afghan people, not by irrational fears and overreaching ambitions of others.
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.
Where’s the progress that we’re going to see in Afghanistan? You have to keep public support both on the economy and the war or these things will really become troubling.
The East Turkestan Islamic Movement, named for an old Uighur name for Xinjiang, is a shadowy group that operates largely out of Afghanistan and Pakistan and is devoted to expelling the Chinese Communist Party from northwestern China.
There’s no doubt that it’s still a dangerous place, Afghanistan. The fortunate thing is that the United States was helping to provide security for Chairman Karzai. And it shows that the United States is committed to that regime.
Now, I know there are many Americans who say, ‘Get out of Afghanistan. Bring ’em all home.’ And there are others who say, ‘Put in hundreds of thousands of more.’
You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway.
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.
Afghanistan is moving to really becoming an export-oriented country.
I thanked President Obama for the United States’ work in supporting education in Pakistan and Afghanistan and for Syrian refugees.
I come from a family of pacifists, so it’s not like I was going to join the war. Sweden is not like the States or England where you might get sent to Afghanistan next month.
Our commitment to Afghanistan is a long-term one. We put a huge amount of resources into trying to make sure there is peace in that country, a huge amount of development assistance, a huge amount of political support for the government.
The Syrian border town of Qa’im was the main gateway Islamic radicals used to go to Iraq. Syria became the passageway for extremists from Egypt, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations to fight a jihad against American forces in Iraq.
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.
How could a guy sitting in a cave in Afghanistan, have… plotted so perfectly the hijacking of four planes and then guaranteed that three of them would end up precisely on their targets?
I have a pretty amazing life. Even back-to-back deployments – Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey – it’s still pretty rewarding.
Carter’s hopes died when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and he ended up having to reverse policy and launch the military buildup that Reagan continued. Mr. Obama would be forced back into a war on terror if terrorist groups pull off enough damaging or frightening attacks to force this issue to the fore.
Afghanistan is a rural nation, where 85 percent of people live in the countryside. And out there it’s very, very conservative, very tribal – almost medieval.
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.
I have a very deep concern about President Obama putting in another 21,000 troops into Afghanistan with the promise of more to come.
