#afghanistan

America has survived and grown stronger through September 11th and subsequent wars with Afghanistan and Iraq and those who seek to do us harm. We have faced - and met - tremendous challenges ramping up a public health and safety system to protect Americans from future threats. ↗

— Christopher Bond

#america #challenges #faced #future #grown

We ought to recognize that we have an offensive responsibility to take the war to the terrorists where they are. That responsibility has waned in the last year as military and intelligence resources were withdrawn from Afghanistan and Pakistan to be used in Iraq. ↗

— Bob Graham

#intelligence #iraq #last #last year #military

In Afghanistan, this is the problem, because everybody holds a piece of that mirror, and they all look at it and claim that they hold the entire truth. ↗

— Mohsen Makhmalbaf

#because #claim #entire #everybody #hold

Al Qaeda is on the run, partly because the United States is in Afghanistan, pushing on al Qaeda, and working internationally to cut off the flow of funds to al Qaeda. They are having a difficult time. They failed in this endeavor. ↗

— Ed Royce

#al #because #cut #difficult #difficult time

Lasting peace and security in Iraq and Afghanistan will be achieved when we establish the conditions for democratic, economically viable nations. ↗

— John Warner

#afghanistan #conditions #democratic #economically #establish

I wanted to share the risks the digger in Afghanistan took every day. Whenever I could I joined patrols ‘outside the wire’, walking the same dusty tracks and fields as the ordinary soldiers. I did everything in my power to keep them alive, I failed. In that year I lost ten soldiers under my command, killed in action. I personally identified the remains of each of them, sending them home to their families. More than sixty of my soldiers were wounded, some horribly. ↗

— Major General John Cantwell

#ptsd #sorrow #war #family

War is life multiplied by some number that no one has ever heard of. ↗

— Sebastian Junger

#army #combat #life #marine-corps #military

Like the Nazis, the cadres of jihad have a death wish that sets the seal on their nihilism. The goal of a world run by an oligarchy in possession of Teutonic genes, who may kill or enslave other 'races' according to need, is not more unrealizable than the idea that a single state, let alone the globe itself, could be governed according to the dictates of an allegedly holy book. This mad scheme begins by denying itself the talents (and the rights) of half the population, views with superstitious horror the charging of interest, and invokes the right of Muslims to subject nonbelievers to special taxes and confiscations. Not even Afghanistan or Somalia, scenes of the furthest advances yet made by pro-caliphate forces, could be governed for long in this way without setting new standards for beggary and decline. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#caliphate #death-of-osama-bin-laden #fascism #islam #islamic-banking

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. ↗

— Ed Balls

#cheer #could #get #i #public

And across Afghanistan, every single day, Afghan soldiers, Afghan police and ISAF troops are serving shoulder-to-shoulder in some very difficult situations. And our engagement with them, our shoulder-to-shoulder relationship with them, our conduct of operations with them every single day defines the real relationship. ↗

— John R. Allen

#afghan #afghanistan #conduct #day #defines