Afghanistan's Quotes

#1. A democratically elected congressman of the United States of America should not be talking of an ethnic divide in Afghanistan, should not be interfering in Afghanistan's internal affairs.

Hamid Karzai

#2. It is the responsibility of Afghanistan's new government to gain better control over the country's administration and to resolutely fight the drug trade and corruption.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen

#3. When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier.

Rudyard Kipling

#4. I can't imagine how Afghanistan's fall isn't going to be ten times faster than Iraq's.

Eliza Griswold

#5. Afghanistan is going to be here a long time, and what's critical is that Afghanistan's relationship with its neighbors are, to the maximum extent they can be, constructive and operationally useful.

John R. Allen

#6. Afghanistan's barren, ragged desolation moaned a long dirge of ancient wonder, the earth's broken features ready to receive fallen horsemen, the lost traveller, and all the butchered tribes.

Zia Haider Rahman

#7. I was thinking about Afghanistan's future, Afghanistan's next generation, what we have next. These children who learn how to kill people, how to do jihad, how to behead, how to fire, this would be Afghanistan.

Najibullah Quraishi

#8. Lost Decency (a memoir) covers three phases of Afghanistan's last 50 years (Where it was? What Happened and Where it is headed?)

Atta Arghandiwal

#9. Afghanistan's borders are arbitrary, drawn to meet 19th-century political needs rather than to respect ethnic or religious patterns.

Stephen Kinzer

#10. However, it does seem now that the international community, more importantly the powers that have influence, and, even more importantly, Afghanistan's neighbors realize that it is high time that they work together, and not against one another.

Lakhdar Brahimi

#11. Clinton has more important things to worry about. He not only risks being destroyed historically, like Afghanistan's Buddha statues; he also could end up going to jail.

Ed Koch

#12. In my view, the greatest threat to America's future isn't hiding in a cave in Pakistan or Afghanistan; it's right here at home. Baby boomers like myself are on course to become the first generation of Americans who leave things in worse shape than they found them.

David Walker

#13. There's an enormous amount of corruption, and as one American adviser put it to me, "The police in Afghanistan are thugs. We equip them, we train them, and now they are equipped and trained thugs."

Jeff Merkley

#14. For those 10 months back in Afghanistan after university, I felt I had no rights. It felt like I didn't exist. It was like I was their doll, and I was lost, somehow. My sister's husband brought me to an art gallery. It had a big effect on me.

Malina Suliman

#15. The net effect of Clarence Darrow's great speech yesterday seemed to be precisely the same as if he had bawled it up a rainspout in the interior of Afghanistan.

H.L. Mencken

#16. The existence of the Taliban, in my view, is a tragedy for Afghanistan. We as Americans need to understand our role in helping bring that tragedy about. So I think it's important to look at the stories about why these people are fighting.

Anand Gopal

#17. The closeness of the India-Afghanistan relationship is not a new phenomenon. It has existed since time immemorial. And as a close friend, ever since India's Independence, we have done and will continue to do whatever is required to be done to see Afghanistan grow and progress as a close friend.

Narendra Modi

#18. 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.

Nick Turse

#19. If there is a thread that unites all of our work, whether it's in Iowa or whether it's in Maryland or whether it's among our young men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan, I believe that it's the thread of human dignity.

Martin O'Malley

#20. My message is, is that although some of you didn't agree with the actions we took, now let's work together to rebuild Iraq, rebuild Afghanistan, fight AIDS and hunger, deal with slavery, like sex slavery, and deal with proliferation. Let's work together on big issues.

George W. Bush

#21. 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.

Stephen Harper

#22. Once the fire from the retaliatory strike dies down, the American people are going to find out that it is the Clinton Administration's wrongheaded policies that resulted in the creation of this terrorist haven in Afghanistan in the first place.

Dana Rohrabacher

#23. 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.

Khaled Hosseini

#24. If the thumbnail version of the Iraq war was that Bush lied about WMD, the thumbnail version of Obama's war in Afghanistan is that the generals pushed him into a war he didn't want to fight.

Michael Hastings

#25. I vowed to our countrymen that I would do everything I could to protect the American people. That's why I said to Afghanistan: If you harbor a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorist.

George W. Bush

#26. There's no country in the world that's more devastated from natural resources than Afghanistan.

Jim Fowler

#27. 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.

Michael Mullen

#28. By releasing these five top Taliban commanders, the U.S. is demonstrating that it is throwing in the towel in the long struggle against the Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies in Afghanistan.

Jonathan S. Tobin

#29. And the last thing that I want to see us do is ask more and more of our troops [in Afghanistan ] without guaranteeing that we're providing more and more of what's necessary to make the mission successful.

Rahm Emanuel

#30. There are more good people than bad people, and overall there's more that's good in the world than there is that's bad. We just need to hear about it, we just need to see it.

Tucker Elliot

#31. It's a thin line between what we're calling acceptable and not acceptable. As a leader, you're supposed to know when not to cross it. But how do you know? Does the army teach us how to control our emotions? Does the army teach us how to deal with a friend bleeding out in front of you? No.

David Finkel

#32. Afghanistan had collapsed and everyone's life now lies broken at different levels within the rubble.

Nadeem Aslam

#33. It's that time of year again, April 15, taxes. I know it's depressing, but just remember, you're paying for roads, bridges, hospitals, and an army to keep the nation free. Unfortunately that nation is Afghanistan.

Bill Maher

#34. [Today's left] would have left us with Slobodan Milosevic in power, Bosnia ethnically cleansed, Kosovo part of Greater Serbia, Afghanistan under the Taliban, and Iraq the property of a psychopathic crime family. Now, I'm sorry to say, I've no patience with that leftist mentality anymore.

Christopher Hitchens

#35. Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Centcom, is probably the most decorated officer of his generation.

David Ignatius

#36. One of the lessons of Vietnam, which we failed to heed in the Iraq war and the Afghanistan surge, is that before you commit U.S. military forces to aid or assist, it is essential to know what you want them to achieve.

Kathleen Troia McFarland

#37. Given his campaign rhetoric about Afghanistan, I think I myself, our commanders, and our troops had expected more commitment to the cause and more passion for it from him. ...I never doubted Obama's support for the troops, only his support for their mission." Pg. 299

Robert M. Gates

#38. 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.

Bill Skarsgard

#39. We have to fight radical Islam wherever it exists. It's in Afghanistan, it's in Saudi Arabia, throughout the Middle-East in big numbers and it's in the United States.

Tom Tancredo

#40. Afghans think the burqa is a permanent part of culture. But, if you bring it to Europe, how would people react? Afghanistan doesn't want to change its culture, but it can change, all the time. So why are Afghans giving so much value to it? The burqa is not natural. It's not human nature.

Malina Suliman

#41. Saying he is in Afghanistan in a spirit of brotherhood, we have also vowed that we will not allow each other's countries, ever, to be used against interests of ours.

Pervez Musharraf

#42. 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.

Liam Fox

#43. The most successful cultural diplomacy strategy integrates people-to-people or arts/culture/media-to-people interactions into the basic business of diplomacy. The programs in Afghanistan, Egypt, and Iran all contribute to core goals of U.S. policy in those countries.

Cynthia P. Schneider

#44. Working with kids in Soweto in South Africa, it's rough out there. But the bottom line is you've got to go to know. In Cambodia, there are 10,000 landmines. Same in Afghanistan, same in Colombia. I'm totally addicted to traveling.

Quincy Jones

#45. Night raids are only the first step in the American detention process in Afghanistan. Suspects are usually sent to one of a series of prisons on U.S. military bases around the country. There are officially nine such jails, called Field Detention Sites in military parlance.

Anand Gopal

#46. Afghanistan is more than the 'graveyard of empires.' It's the mother of vicious circles.

Maureen Dowd

#47. The big question now is who will take power in Afghanistan once the Taliban is defeated. I was thinking, how about Al Gore? He's not doing anything, he needs a job, and he's already got the beard.

Jay Leno

#48. It's an Afghanistan goat, so it can't stay here, or else it'll choke on the sweet air of freedom.

Trey Parker

#49. 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.

Rick Perry

#50. It is time we accept there's no Cronkite moment for Afghanistan. Perhaps it's time we value the hearts and minds of our own over distant Afghan tribes.

Tiffany Madison

#51. I have this thought, it's horrible, and it makes me sick, but it's true: one day these students will grow up and have their own kids, and they're going to name them for men and women who will die in this war.

Tucker Elliot

#52. Obama said, 'I welcome debate among my team, but I won't tolerate division.

Bob Woodward

#53. The mission - the overall mission is to dismantle and defeat and disrupt al-Qaeda. But we have to make sure there's not a safe haven that returns in Afghanistan.

Michael Mullen

#54. It's a tribal state, and it always will be. Whether we like it or not, whenever we withdraw from Afghanistan, whether it's now or years from now, we'll have an incendiary situation. Should we stay and play traffic cop? I don't think that serves our strategic interests.

Jon Huntsman Jr.

#55. Barack Obama's life was so much simpler in 2009. Back then, he had refined the cold act of blaming others for the bad economy into an art form. Deficits? Blame Bush's tax cuts. Spending? Blame the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. No business investment? Blame Wall Street.

John Sununu

#56. Look at the violence in Pakistan and the presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan: the more troops we put in the more violent Pakistan becomes.

Michael Hastings

#57. Afghanistan doesn't have the oil of the Khazars, he said, and we're not ready to prostitute our women like the Thais. Unlike the Westerner's, ours is not a spiritual poverty but a material one. When our needs in that area are met, we will not have the dilemma or crisis of Western man.

Zia Haider Rahman

#58. Women in Afghanistan do not ask the United States to stay for the simple or sentimental reason of safeguarding their rights. They are the first ones to say that this is not enough of a reason for the world's remaining superpower to remain in their country.

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

#59. Pretty is different,' he murmured. 'Pretty has no scars. You are ... ' jaw muscles tensed again. 'Like the morning sky in Afghanistan. Not 'pretty'. Word's 'breathtaking'.

Aleksandr Voinov

#60. Well Australia's been in Afghanistan from the get go, way back in 2001, but we have been resolute throughout and with support from both sides of Australian politics.

Kevin Rudd

#61. Some people will talk about how Afghanistan has improved, but they're really just talking about the cities. In the countryside where the war has been fought, it's really not that much better than it was in 2001.

Anand Gopal

#62. I was in Afghanistan and then obviously in Iraq. And I realized that you can't control life. You can do a lot to prepare. You can train, and at the end of the day there's an element that's always going to be beyond your control.

Nathaniel Fick

#63. 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.

Tom Brokaw

#64. It is no accident, then, that each of our major wars has served to enhance the power of government in Washington: the Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Edward S. Greenberg

#65. If you want to understand what's happening to the situation in a town in Afghanistan, go down to the market. Is it vibrant? Is it safe? That will tell you an enormous amount about the security situation.

Gus O'Donnell

#66. The problem in Afghanistan is really not so much land as water. It's a dry country with ample amounts of water running through it, but not to good enough effect.

P. J. O'Rourke

#67. I just immediately connect everything to the wars I have been covering overseas, and that's not the case back home. I wrongly assumed all Americans at home were as consumed with our troops in Afghanistan as I was abroad.

Lynsey Addario

#68. I'm trying to sum up President Obama's first 11 months in office. He gave billions to Wall Street, cracked down on illegal immigrants getting health care, and he's sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. You know something, he may go down in history as our greatest Republican president ever.

Jay Leno

#69. As someone who's spent time with our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan on USO tours and met wounded warriors at Walter Reed and Bethesda, I feel a deep obligation to the men and women who have risked life and limb on our behalf.

Al Franken

#70. If Iraq and Afghanistan have taught us anything in recent history, it is the unpredictability of war and that these things are easier to get into than to get out of, and, frankly, the facile way in which too many people talk about, 'Well, let's just go attack them.'

Robert M. Gates

#71. Allowing Islamic Sharia law into the constitutions of the U.S-created Islamic (!) Republic of Afghanistan and Republic of Iraq in 2004 and 2005 was as foolhardy as it would have been to write emperor-worship and Shinto militarism into Japan's 1946 constitution.

Robert Spencer

#72. My opinion of the Russians has changed most drastically in the last week than even (sic) the two-and-a-half years before that. It's only now dawning upon the world the magnitude of the action that the Soviets undertook in invading Afghanistan.

Jimmy Carter

#73. If a person is a U.S. citizen, and he is on the battlefield in Afghanistan or Iraq trying to attack our troops, he will face the full brunt of the U.S. military response.

John O. Brennan

#74. That's driven by any number of factors, the most prominent of which have been the combat experience of two major campaigns - one in Afghanistan and the other in Iraq - and the ongoing demands of the global war on terrorism.

Stephen Cambone

#75. The last two days I've been on long bus rides, driven through the countryside on the back of a motorbike, and crossed rivers on wooden boats, traversing currents into a different century. It's late and dark, but I'm so close now. My uncle died five kilometers from here.

Tucker Elliot

#76. Despite failing to get bin Laden, the U.S. government and media portrayed the early Afghanistan war as a great victory.

Michael Hastings

#77. We must be honest in acknowledging that neither Germany nor the U.S. has the luxury of assuming that we can skate by on half-measures in Afghanistan and Pakistan and not risk suffering the consequences.

Susan Rice

#78. An interim government was set up in Afghanistan. It included two women, one of whom was Minister of Women's Affairs. Man, who'd she have to show here ankles to to get that job?

Tina Fey

#79. The rapid proliferation of cell phones in Afghanistan proves that anything that adds value to people's lives spreads like brushfire - and commerce is certainly a force that could add value for Afghanis.

Iqbal Quadir

#80. There's nothing I can do to erase the shadow of misery and despair from the eyes looking back at me from the photos [that I took in Afghanistan].

Vladislav Tamarov

#81. It is not surprising that most Pakistanis do not support America's bombardment of Afghanistan. The Afghans are neighbours on the brink of starvation and devastated by war. America has shown itself to be untrustworthy, a superpower that uses its values as a scabbard for its sword.

Mohsin Hamid

#82. It would be very hard to bring a wife to Afghanistan. In America, I'd have no problem with her doing whatever she wanted, but in Afghanistan, that's not the case.

Hyder Akbar

#83. I remind you again we had those elections [in Afghanistan and Iraq] because we had boots on the ground and we had people that could help people, and we had people on the ground that could get into somebody's face when they had to, and do whatever was required.

Peter Schoomaker

#84. 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.

David Cameron

#85. We all lose people. We all have to live in the aftermath. It's how we move forward that counts, but sometimes we are tethered to something in our past that won't let us move forward.

Tucker Elliot

#86. For me, it's an honor for the military to ask me to go to Iraq, Afghanistan, or GITMO. I'm happy to go.

R. Lee Ermey

#87. Appearances can be misleading. You just never know what's inside someone until he's tested.

Daniel Rodriguez

#88. 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.

Condoleezza Rice

#89. 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.

Simon Sinek

#90. An infantryman's job is to deliver his enemies into the waiting hands of Death. It is Doc's job to protect his brothers from Death, to knock him aside and say, "Not today.

Adam Fenner

#91. Marine and Army women have deployed with infantry units in Iraq and Afghanistan in what's called female engagement teams, going into villages, talking with women and sometimes coming under fire.

Renee Montagne

#92. September 11, 2001: Citizens of the U.S., besieged by terror's sting,
rose up, weeping glory, as if on eagles' wings.
from the poem Angel of Remembrance: Candles for September 11, 2001

Aberjhani

#93. We don't see that the Taliban ultimately can succeed, and it's a combination both of what the international community can do to support Afghanistan, not just in the short term, but over the long term.

John R. Allen

#94. There's no place for mob justice in Afghanistan.

Ashraf Ghani

#95. If American forces leave Afghanistan, the Taliban is going to do what to America? Don't say you're worried about what they will do to the Afghan people. If that was America's concern, America's operational presence there would be much different.

Henry Rollins

#96. The U.S. couldn't play a military role in different areas like Iraq and Afghanistan without huge quantities of oil. So a shortage or disruption in oil would not only damage the U.S. economy; it would undercut American military supremacy.

Michael Klare

#97. In another show of America's force to the world, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, Carter responded by boycotting the Olympics. And thus was a fearsome blow struck at little fourteen-year-old American girls who had spent their lives training for the Olympics.

Ann Coulter

#98. It's ironic that early on in the war with Afghanistan, the Americans and the British were saying, 'We recognise there must be a Palestinian state,' then they rapidly forgot about it. I think history will show that that kind of amnesia will come back to haunt you.

Tom Paulin

#99. For your own security it's imperative you blend in with the native population.

Tucker Elliot

#100. I'm finding myself really angry over spending and the deficit. I'm finding myself really angry over what's happening in the Middle East, the decision to stay in Afghanistan indefinitely. I'm angry about cap and trade. And I've been on record for a long time on the failed war on drugs.

Gary Johnson