We can be proud of our record as an international beacon of liberty. From fostering democracies in Eastern Europe to the stabilization of Iraq and Afghanistan, we have been true to that calling and helped spread freedom to oppressed peoples everywhere.
If we can't understand the Afghan family, we can't understand Afghanistan.
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.
The Taliban has not, in my judgment, in any significant way changed their fundamental goal and objective, which is to take over Afghanistan and return to running that country. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't have negotiation talks with them. I think we should. But we've got to be clear-eyed about it.
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.
The men and women of Afghanistan are building a nation that is free, and proud, and fighting terror - and America is honored to be their friend.
We don't consider the battle has ended in Afghanistan... The battle has begun and its fires are picking up. These fires will reach the White House, because it is the center of injustice and tyranny.
The United States can't impose democracies. We can't impose our will. The Russians found that out in Afghanistan.
I oppose the spending of trillions in Iraq and Afghanistan, I strongly oppose Islamic extremism but don't believe that sending troops to die in two unwinnable wars makes sense.
As I found while leading special operations forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, if the problem is interconnected, your organization must be, as well.
In reality, Afghanistan has functioned as a nation-state for more than two centuries, and its army and bureaucracy reach back to the 19th century.
As far as Iraq, the important thing is that the Taliban is gone in Afghanistan, three-quarters of the al-Qaida leadership is either dead or in jail, and we now have Saudi Arabia working with us, Pakistan working with us.
I don't want to go and start trying to make jokes in places like India, Tanzania or Iraq. Afghanistan is not a funny place.
It's always a mistake for writers to key their submissions to world events, because they move so quickly and unpredictably, as has certainly proven the case in Afghanistan.
And the fact of the matter is there were thousands of people that went through those training camps in Afghanistan. We know they are seeking deadlier weapons - chemical, biological and nuclear weapons if they can get it.
After 2014, we will support a unified Afghanistan as it takes responsibility for its own future.
President Obama had voiced strong support for the effort in Afghanistan during his campaign, pledging to add two brigades, which he did. But since the inauguration... the administration had signaled that the U.S. commitment needed careful assessment, and we needed to recalibrate the strategy and objectives.
Mattis has been sharply critical of President Barack Obama's policies on Iran and Obama's capping of troop numbers and campaign end-dates in theaters of war such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Mattis also appears to be a skeptic of the Obama-era policy of putting women into combat roles.
The legal system in Afghanistan is very immature and porous.
Afghanistan is a country in need. Afghanistan needs to protect itself in the region; Afghanistan needs to secure itself within the country. Afghanistan needs to develop its forces, and Afghanistan needs to provide stability to the people.
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.
I believe in the transformational power of liberty. I believe that the free Iraq is in this nation's interests. I believe a free Afghanistan is in this nation's interest.
They're criminals, they brutalized Afghanistan, they killed our people, they destroyed our land.
Afghanistan's story, backwards or sideways, is not confined to the Americans or the English.
Terrorist groups and their extremist state sponsors cannot be fought with kid gloves and flowery words of persuasion. As the U.S. has displayed in Afghanistan and in Iraq, only a vigilant and determined campaign of confrontation can deter and obstruct them.
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.
My first assignment was 12 weeks in Afghanistan. After that, I covered the Indian election for two months. Then I got a phone call saying, 'Hey, we want you in Brazil,' and the same happened for Somalia.
Bin Laden's role in the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s had made him a hero around the Middle East.
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.
My time as editor has been overlapped by a crisis - a prolonged, labyrinthine, tragic, seemingly non-ending crisis - that involves the prehistory of 9/11, 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, fraught histories between the United States and almost everyone.
Gen. Tommy Franks told me the war was being compromised as specialized personnel and equipment were being shifted from Afghanistan to prepare for the war in Iraq - a war more than a year away.
More than a decade and half after 9/11, U.S. military actions in countries such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan and several other Muslim nations are governed by the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that was passed in the days immediately after 9/11.
It seems not to matter that we are at the brink of a war that may spread beyond Afghanistan and Iraq to Iran and Georgia and then where? To Syria? To North Korea? To China? That we in America are in economic doldrums and are seeing small businesses fold and houses reclaimed by banks and a smouldering panic that is palpable everywhere.
We've been in the nation-building business since World War I, and especially since WWII. The goal is not a Jeffersonian Democracy in Afghanistan, but a representative government that respects human rights, protects its own people, and is a friend of the West. These are very realistic - and necessary - goals.
Obama is making a choice now that will lead to the deaths of many thousands of civilians in Afghanistan by American hands. By ordinary standards of presidents, he is a decent man. But those standards aren't good enough. He's in a position either to kill or not to kill, and he's made the decision to kill.
There is close to zero trust in institutions in Afghanistan. The mobile carriers have more trust than the banks.