In Afghanistan, getting shot at was a regular occurrence. I viewed survival as a numbers game. As point man, every time I entered a Taliban compound first, I played the odds in my head.
I come from a big family of hairdressers; they didn’t read newspapers. I would say, ‘I’m off to Afghanistan…’ and they would say, ‘Have fun!’
Afghanistan is a land-locked country.
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.
We can stay in Afghanistan and stabilize the situation, or we can get out and win, or we can get out and lose.
The saddest moment as Prime Minister is writing letters to families who have lost loved ones in Afghanistan or those who we have tried to help in hostage situations but it hasn’t worked out.
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.
‘Each One Lost’ I wrote the day after I got home. My week in Afghanistan was a very short trip, but it was a powerful experience.
The first thing to recognize not just about Afghanistan but about any poor undeveloped country is that as big as it looks on the map, it’s much bigger when you’re there.
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.
Afghanistan does have an air force: It has two C-130s. I saw one of them. It was nice, a gift from the United States. But two planes don’t even make a Caribbean charter airline, let alone an air force for a country at war.
Afghanistan has safe zones… so it’s possible to send grown-ups back to that country. We can’t empty Afghanistan.
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.
Too often, stories about Afghanistan center around the various wars, the opium trade, the war on terrorism. Precious little is said about the Afghan people themselves – their culture, their traditions, how they lived in their country and how they manage abroad as exiles.
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.
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.
Iraq and Afghanistan will, over time, become stable. But the War on Terror will continue long after Iraq and Afghanistan have had success in standing up their own governments.
To get into Afghanistan, I bribed my way into a camel caravan of smugglers.
The fate of Syria hangs in the balance, but it is entirely possible that the fall of the Assad regime will result in anarchy and cause Syria to turn into a second Afghanistan, a base for anti-Israel terrorism.
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.
Sudan expelled bin Laden on May 18, 1996, to Afghanistan.
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.
In Afghanistan, Biden’s woke generals tucked their tail and ran. He dishonored the sacrifices made by every American soldier who fought in the 20-year war, especially those who gave their life for the cause.
Like Obama before him, Trump will escalate in Afghanistan. Like Obama before him, Trump will lose in Afghanistan. And the rest of us, shamefully, will continue to look the other way.
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.
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.
But if too many countries, as has been the case, interfere too much in the internal affairs, the political situation of Afghanistan, then of course we can’t hope satisfactory results.
Maybe to feel like an Afghan I needed to be born and raised in the States, and maybe I needed to live in Afghanistan for nearly a decade to feel like an American. Both worlds shaped me, but neither one of them completely correspond to the picture I have of myself.
What we have seen with Islamist extremism, whether it is in Mali or Somalia or Afghanistan, is that the disease is not necessarily the individual country. The disease is the Islamist extremism, and that’s what we have to fight; that’s the narrative that we have to beat.
There isn’t, even now, a great tradition of novel-writing in Afghanistan. Most of the literature is in the form of poetry.
I do think the ICC has financially helped Afghanistan and Ireland a lot, but I think it’s crucial that the ICC provides these Associate nations with quality coaches to work on their basics.
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 British soldiers serving in Afghanistan alongside Prince Harry were in exceptional danger until he was withdrawn.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
A day in Afghanistan is like a week at home.
The people who illegally cross into the country are from countries that have very close ties to al Qaeda, whether it’s Yemen or Afghanistan, Pakistan, China. It is an absolute national disgrace.
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.
There’s an 800 kilometer border between Iran and Afghanistan.
Since the intervention in Afghanistan, we suddenly began to notice when, in political discussions, we found ourselves only among Europeans or Israelis.
Perhaps we underestimated the challenges in Afghanistan in the past. That’s why we are now strengthening and intensifying our commitment.
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.
‘Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age’ was quite a favourite headline for some wobbly liberals. The slogan does all the work. But an instant’s thought shows that Afghanistan is being, if anything, bombed out of the Stone Age.
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 personally was involved in going over to Afghanistan to meet the troops. My father was a marine, so that was just amazing.
In fact, if you look upon the situation today, there is great division in the world and we have failed to capitalize on that unity to finish the job in Afghanistan and against al Qaeda.
We never want to update ‘Black Watch,’ because it’s about a moment in time, and through that moment, it manages to speak about Afghanistan and all other wars. This play is ‘about’ Iraq, but it’s actually about every war that’s ever been or will ever be.
