When an army unit returns from service in Iraq or Afghanistan, it barely gets a breather before it begins training for its next deployment.
Afghanistan and Iraq were lumped together in what was called a ‘global war on terrorism.’
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.
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.
I looked into corruption in Afghanistan through a work called ‘Payback’ and impersonated a police officer, set up a fake checkpoint on the street in Kabul and stopped cars, but instead of asking them for a bribe, offered them money and apologized on behalf of the Kabul Police Department.
Most liberals I know were for invading Afghanistan right after 9/11.
The best time of being a Marine was Afghanistan. There will never be a time when I’m sleeping in the dirt and I haven’t showered in four months and I’m with 50 of the people that I’ll be the closest with ever.
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.
The United States was an innocent victim after September 11. It had never attacked or occupied Afghanistan. So therefore it had no choice but to go after the aggressors.
They say Afghanistan is the worst country for a girl to be born. Hogwash!
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’ve spent 7 Christmases in Iraq and Afghanistan with WWE.
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.
When I was 13, I read ‘Et la paix dans le monde, Docteur?’ a physician’s account of working with Medecins Sans Fontieres during the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. It was this book that inspired me to work for MSF.
The young patriots now returning from war in Iraq and Afghanistan and other deployments worldwide are joining the ranks of veterans to whom America owes an immense debt of gratitude.
A notorious network of violent Islamist hoodlums, concentrated in the rough-and-tumble district of Molenbeek in Brussels, has been operating in plain sight since the 1990s, planning, plotting and carrying out dozens of elaborate jihadi missions from Afghanistan to Algeria.
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.
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.
We are so appreciative of the men and women in uniform who are protecting us, whether in Afghanistan or Iraq or on ships around the world. For our security, they are taking the offensive to the terrorists overseas.
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.
As well as our relationship with Afghanistan, I am researching the legacy of other European empires – in Africa. We think of those empires as history, but actually, they still haunt our everyday lives in the strangest of ways.
Anyone who’s traveled with me to Afghanistan knows why I love this book: ‘War,’ by Sebastian Junger.
Military hardliners called me a ‘security threat’ for promoting peace in South Asia and for supporting a broad-based government in Afghanistan.
Make no mistake, our troops will be in Afghanistan and Iraq for a long time.
If wars were won by superior technology alone, the United States would not have been vanquished in Vietnam or waylaid in Afghanistan.
In places like South Afghanistan, where cultural norms prevent men from entering homes, female vaccinators often make the difference between a closed or opened door.
This is now a global war on terror and, indeed, it is important, it is imperative that we win in the battles in Afghanistan and that we win in the battles in Iraq. And as the gentleman from Georgia has mentioned, this is not something that is going to be quick and easy.
I obviously did not volunteer to go to Afghanistan solely to protect the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans.
A key flaw of the Obama administration’s approach to Afghanistan has been constantly announcing proposed withdrawal dates for U.S. forces, which has enabled the Taliban to believe they can simply wait out the clock.
Being a rapper as a woman is not a good thing in Afghanistan. I kind of put my life in danger whenever I go somewhere to talk about women’s rights or make music, rap, or have interviews.
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.
As recently as the 1970s, some Pashtun leaders in Afghanistan were pushing to create a new state, Pashtunistan, by joining with Pashtuns in Pakistan.
In his first term, President Barack Obama played a cautious manager navigating the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression and cleaning up the messes left by President George W. Bush in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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 think of all the guys that strap a gun on their backs and head to Afghanistan and Iraq to keep us free and safe and maintain what America has stood for.
Most Pakistani politics is conducted within a narrow spectrum. Politicians spend much time debating the best ways to fight India, or take Kashmir, or dominate Afghanistan, or punish the United States for its real and imagined sins.
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.
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.
The question in their minds was, why did the outside world, and particularly the Western world, produce all these landmines, and send them to Afghanistan? This business must be stopped. It’s a dirty business to produce such a horrible device.
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.
In the 1980s America reacted to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. We supported a war that left a nation torn to pieces. And as the last Soviet tank left the country, so did we.
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.
As we continue to make great progress in the war on terror, now more than ever, it is important that members of the international community stand-by and bolster the efforts of the emerging diplomatic leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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 question in their minds was, why did the outside world, and particularly the Western world, produce all these landmines, and send them to Afghanistan? This business must be stopped. It’s a dirty business to produce such a horrible device.
We as the Afghan people and government are willing to help Pakistan work for peace in Afghanistan and work for peace in Pakistan, together.
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?
You would have thought that after 9/11 the president would have finished the job in Afghanistan, and kept the focus on capturing Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda deputies, but he and his team gave top priority to their original plan to invade Iraq.
With ‘A Hijacking’ I didn’t talk to anyone who had been hijacked, but with ‘A War,’ I talked to as many soldiers as possible trying to understand how is it in Afghanistan.
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.
