Afghanistan Quotes - Page 29

• If the United States had not intervened in Afghanistan, then obviously, we would have then allowed the attacks of 9/11 to go unanswered. I don't think most of Americans wanted that to happen.

  John McCain

  Thinking, United States, Wanted

  Source: www.realclearpolitics.com

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• If it is bin Laden, he's a very intelligent guy. He's been planning his war for a long time. I remember the last time I met him in 1997 in Afghanistan. And bin Laden said to me "From this mountain, Mr. Robert, upon which you are sitting, we beat the Russian army and helped break the Soviet Union. And I pray to God that he allows us to turn America into a shadow of itself." When I saw the pictures of New York without the World Trade Center, New York looked like a shadow of itself.

  Robert Fisk

  War, Army, Intelligent

  Source: progressive.org

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• If I look at the really important questions in [Middle East] region, I see Iran, where there is a strong desire for a freer society and where people are repressed by a small group of ayatollahs. I see Syria, where we can see a similar desire of the people to be free. These two countries fund Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations and are hurting our efforts in Afghanistan and have been extremely harmful in Iraq. Then I also see large, important countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

  Donald Rumsfeld

  Country, Strong, Hurt

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• I had said from the start that I thought Iraq was a mistake, that we should have stayed focused on Afghanistan. I think it was the right decision because the Taliban at that point had gotten a lot of momentum before I'd gotten into office, partly because we hadn't been paying attention as much as we needed to to Afghanistan.

  Barack Obama

  Mistake, Thinking, Should Have

  Source: abcnews.go.com

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• Toughest decision was early in my presidency when I ordered 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan. As somebody who had run to end a large troop presence overseas.

  Barack Obama

  Running, Decision, Troops

  Source: abcnews.go.com

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• I hope (the United States) will change and they will now focus entirely on helping and building a stronger, better Afghanistan.

  Hamid Karzai

  Change, Focus, Stronger

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• No one seriously disputes that today a woman in Afghanistan is less likely to die giving birth to a child, that the child is more likely to reach the age of five years old, and having reached the age of five that child is far more likely to have a chance to go to school.

  Graeme Smith

  Children, School, Years

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• Remember back then we thought about al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan and a few other places? well, we've seen al Qaeda metastasize. It is now a global scourge. And you have the ascendancy of ISIL. The combination of those two groups -- their appeal to the lone wolfs and we see them acting in Belgium and in France and in Canada and the United States so the threat factors and the nature of the threats are far more complicated and far more serious today than on September 12, 2001.

  Tom Ridge

  Nature, Two, Acting

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• Some have called Afghanistan 'the graveyard of empires,' and it probably is the graveyard of empires.

  James G. Stavridis

  Empires, Graveyard

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• 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.

  James G. Stavridis

  Men, Periods, Force

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• The president is being denounced for not taking the kind of pre-emptive action in Afghanistan that he has been so passionately denounced for taking in Iraq. Damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

  Ferdinand Mount

  Iraq, President, Doe

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• Weather in Afghanistan, 2000 degrees and cloudy. What the f-ck am I doing? I'm stuck on the weather channel. AHHH!

  Ozzy Osbourne

  Weather, Degrees, Stuck

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• When girls in Canada dream about becoming members of parliament, they have a pretty good expectation that parliament is going to be around for them when they graduate. There is no such expectation in Afghanistan. It's all still hope and wanting it but not really sure if it's going to be around.

  Deborah Ellis

  Girl, Dream, Expectations

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• When George W.Bush attacked Afghanistan, it was widely hailed, and the failure of our war there wasn't understood. Within a few months of attacking Afghanistan, Bush clearly moved on to get ready for Iraq, long before Osama bin Laden or Al Qaeda were dispensed with. There was never any serious debate in the press about whether even the notion that every Taliban was our enemy was valid. A lot of assumptions about that war were never challenged.

  Seymour Hersh

  War, Long, Enemy

  Source: progressive.org

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• If you polled the military in Afghanistan as to how many think we should be there or not, the numbers would probably be similar to what the U.S. population believes. That's not because they're watching the news. But, hey, they are out there risking their lives. No one likes to be criticized and it really sucks to be criticized when you're risking your life.

  Michael Hastings

  Military, Believe, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• We can no longer apply the classic criteria to clearly determine whether and when we should use military force. We are waging war in Afghanistan, for example, but it's an asymmetrical war where the enemies are criminals instead of soldiers.

  Otto Schily

  Military, War, Soldier

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• The most interesting place by far was Afghanistan. Just because it is a place that I cannot see myself living. The hardness of the people and the history of the country is just so completely intense.

  Henry Rollins

  Country, People, Interesting

  Interview with Danny Stygion, www.sinicalmagazine.com. October 1, 2011.

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• The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border of Afghanistan, I wrote to President Jimmy Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski

  War, Opportunity, Giving

  Source: www.marxists.org

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• If I could go to Kabul and not die, I would go back to Afghanistan as soon as I could. And, that was the most interesting place that I've been to.

  Henry Rollins

  Interesting, Kabul, Dies

  Interview with Danny Stygion, www.sinicalmagazine.com. October 1, 2011.

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• We got the Iran sanctions done. We got an agreement by Russia to allow us to use Afghanistan to transit supplies for our forces. We got a Security Council resolution on Libya. We got Russia into the WTO to bring in to it a rules-based trading system. All of those things were in our interest. The point is not whether we should work with Russia. The point is whether we should sacrifice other important interests to do so.

  Philip Gordon

  Sacrifice, Important, Done

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• The whole world has become a crowded theater. You could say something here in New York and have it be heard in Afghanistan and potentially trigger riots and it may be something that to you was innocent or was in jest or was satirical and it's taken out of context. I mean, a joke, a tweet or a blog post can make it halfway around the world before the context gets its boots on.

  Suzanne Nossel

  Taken, Mean, World

  Source: to.pbs.org

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• While I disagree with our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, I have nothing but respect and admiration for the men and women deployed in these places.

  Henry Rollins

  Men, Iraq, Admiration

  Interview with Danny Stygion, www.sinicalmagazine.com. October 1, 2011.

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• Afghanistan has always been sort of a fractured nation, very tribal, where the countryside and the distant provinces have been run by custom, by tribal law and by tribal leaders rather than edicts from the central government in Kabul.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Running, Government, Law

  "Khaled Hosseini, Kabul’s Splendid Son". Interview with Michael Mechanic, www.motherjones.com. May/June, 2009.

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• But we have achieved at least two important things. Afghanistan is no longer a safe haven for international terrorists. We have a strong Afghan army, which is fighting the terrorists and Taliban. And the second thing is that they are able to do that without us being there to conduct the combat operations.

  Jens Stoltenberg

  Strong, Army, Fighting

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• 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.

  Ksenia Solo

  Home, Men, Doors

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