Afghanistan War Quotes

You know what I had a problem with? The war - the war in Afghanistan. ~ Lupe Fiasco

Her husband was home, and with Australian troops finally being pulled from the Afghanistan war, maybe she could hold him a little longer this time, and a little harder ~ Kate McCarthy

I disagreed with the conduct of the war, with bombing civilians, categorizing everyone as the enemy or simply as armed men, with the racism and the disregard for those people. ~ Joe Glenton

The true credit for our safety and security goes to our men and women who are serving in places like Iraq and Afghanistan in the global war on terrorism. ~ Asa Hutchinson

The US was forced to withdraw troops from Iraq after an extremely costly decade-long military occupation, leaving in place a regime more closely allied to Iran, the US' regional adversary. The Iraq war depleted the economy, deprived American corporations of oil wealth, greatly enlarged Washington's budget and trade deficits, and reduced the living standards of US citizens. The Afghanistan war had a similar outcome, with high external costs, military retreat, fragile clients, domestic disaffection, and no short or medium term transfers of wealth (imperial pillage) to the US Treasury or private corporations. The Libyan war led to the total destruction of a modern, oil-rich economy in North Africa, the total dissolution of state and civil society, and the emergence of armed tribal, fundamentalist militias opposed to US and EU client regimes in North and sub-Sahara Africa and beyond. Instead ~ James F. Petras

There's a tendency to look at anybody who joined the military as if they underwrote everything that happened policy-wise. That's not really the case. I have a friend who both protested the Iraq War and joined the military, and ended up serving two deployments in Afghanistan. ~ Phil Klay

The best thing we could have done for Afghanistan was to get out of our Humvees and drink more green chai. We should have focused less on finding the enemy, and more on finding our friends. ~ Craig M. Mullaney

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

On August 10, 1984, my plane landed in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. There were no skyscrapers here. The blue domes of the mosques and the faded mountains were the only things rising above the adobe duvals (the houses). The mosques came alive in the evening with multivoiced wailing: the mullahs were calling the faithful to evening prayer. It was such an unusual spectacle that, in the beginning, I used to leave the barracks to listen – the same way that, in Russia, on spring nights, people go outside to listen to the nightingales sing. For me, a nineteen-year-old boy who had lived his whole life in Leningrad, everything about Kabul was exotic: enormous skies – uncommonly starry – occasionally punctured by the blazing lines of tracers. And spread out before you, the mysterious Asian capital where strange people were bustling about like ants on an anthill: bearded men, faces darkend by the sun, in solid-colored wide cotton trousers and long shirts. Their modern jackets, worn over those outfits, looked completely unnatural. And women, hidden under plain dull garments that covered them from head to toe: only their hands visible, holding bulging shopping bags, and their feet, in worn-out shoes or sneakers, sticking out from under the hems.

And somewhere between this odd city and the deep black southern sky, the wailing, beautifully incomprehensible songs of the mullahs. The sounds didn't contradict each other, but rather, in a polyphonic echo, melted away among the ~ Vladislav Tamarov

As we continue to make great progress in the war on terror, now more than ever, it is important that members of the international community stand-by and bolster the efforts of the emerging diplomatic leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan. ~ James Inhofe

Afghanistan is more than the 'graveyard of empires.' It's the mother of vicious circles. ~ Maureen Dowd

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

I generally don't follow domestic news that much aside from how it relates to the stories I'm covering abroad, like what Americans think of the War in Afghanistan. ~ Lynsey Addario

As a soldier, I survived World War I when most of my comrades did not. ~ Lester B. Pearson

American slavery was specifically racist slavery. It could not exist apart from racism, and could not be separated from it. Slavery was a massive institution, but its evil was only enabled by the constraints of law and power. Change the law, and you can end the slaver, for the slavery rested on law. But racism rests in the heart and mind. You can change laws, but changing hearts is a whole different matter. Once the slavery was taken away, the racism still existed. The hearts of millions of whiles hated and despised blacks just as before, only now even more so. Now they would have the added insult of an occupying government and military force attempting to make them live as equals - politically at the very least. If the racism remained, unrepentant and unhealed - and it certainly did - the evil would only manifest in a new way. ~ Joel McDurmon

Long-range missiles with hybrid thermonuclear and necromantic payloads. Grafted and crossbred infantry divisions. Strategic alliances with folkloric, extraplanar, and subterranean entities. Field deployment of weaponized paleofauna. Large-scale saturation of target areas with invasive fungal and floral xeno organisms. Megadeaths and mega-undeaths. This is the Cold War now. An American president must be found who, whatever his other qualifications, is prepared to maintain our competitiveness in this area. I'm afraid that that person is you. ~ Austin Grossman

I learned that year that nothing is so unpredictable as who will survive a war and who won't. ~ Arthur Golden

We packed up some tarps and followed the man to a town called Pleasant Grove. I have cousins who live there, but I hadn't driven through since before the tornado. It was unrecognizable. Houses were gone, cars were upside down and scattered all over the place. It looked like a war zone. And I would know. ~ Noah Galloway

I don't read a lot of inspirational books for life. But for writing, I think the two best books are The War of Art and William Zinsser's On Writing Well. I read a lot of classics; ~ Donald Miller

We obviously don't live in a perfect world. If we did, then my dad would never have volunteered for Vietnam so he could use the GI Bill to pay for college, Uncle Google would have more important things to do than searching for eight hundred million reasons why our schools suck, and I wouldn't be at an education leadership conference in Jakarta because there'd be no need for it ... right? ~ Tucker Elliot

In the war between the humans and the robots, the humans had to win. Call me hopeful. ~ Dan Mangan

[I]f you look at United States history since World War II, you find that of the 10 presidents who preceded Barack Obama, seven left office with a debt ratio lower than when they came in. Who were the three exceptions? Ronald Reagan and the two George Bushes. ~ Paul Krugman

To curtail free expression strikes twice at intellectual freedom, for whoever deprives another of the right to state unpopular views necessarily deprives others of the right to listen to those views. ~ C. Vann Woodward

If we have any problems, it's always with the government of the United States. ~ Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

We can be for peace without supporting the enemy. We can be against this war without rooting for the other side. ~ Tim Russert

Who would desire peace should be prepared for war. ~ Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus

In making war with nature, there was risk of loss in winning. ~ John McPhee

People should go about their daily lives, to work, to live, to travel, to shop, to do the things people did in the same way as they did them before 11 September. ~ Tony Blair

Wage war on death. Live for love. ~ Ted Dekker

Why would Westerners interpret victories of war by Sun Tzu as signs of strength and wisdom, but victories of war by Bible believers as signs of barbarism and ignorance? This cognitive dissonance is either a symptom of religious bigotry or a form of "worldview schizophrenia". ~ Steve Cioccolanti

Always Sami. I was tethered to her somehow. To that scared little girl I'd found on the staircase nearly a year earlier; to the past, when teaching was simpler and I could care about everyday problems, when being relentless meant running two extra laps, not waiting for an MP to search the undercarriage of a bus for bombs before letting students approach it. ~ Tucker Elliot

I thought for a minute you were going to start a war for me."
Christian held the door open. "You'll know when that day comes. ~ Dannika Dark

The world can seem very chaotic these days. Humankind is constantly changing, and evolving. Advances in science have made it possible to travel thousands of miles in a matter of hours. We can keep in touch with people we care about and even with the world at large with the push of a button. Many of the diseases that plagued humankind for centuries have been wiped out. Yet there is still poverty. There is still famine. There is still disease. There is still war. There is still injustice. ~ The Prophet Of Life

The battle for the mind of Ronald Reagan was like the trench warfare of World War I: never have so many fought so hard for such barren terrain. ~ Peggy Noonan

I want to tell her to stop, to leave, but parts of me are at war. I'm happy to have her close even if it hurts, even if it doesn't make any sense. But I can't seem to reach for her; I can't hold her like I've always wanted to. ~ Tahereh Mafi

He is not a great man. None of us are great men. We are just caught in the wave of history. ~ Dave Malloy

How is this any different than the big boat argument of people when it came to African-Americans after the Civil War, decided, 'Put them on a boat and send them back where they came from?' You know, he says it in polite language, but that's what Romney's been saying, 'Get home where you came from, start all over again.' ~ Chris Matthews

The art of war is at once comprehensive and complicated; ... it demands much previous study; and ... the possession of it, in its most improved and perfect state, is always a great moment to the security of a nation. This, therefore, ought to be a serious care of every government; and for this purpose, an academy, where a regular course of instruction is given, is an obvious expedient, which different nations have successfully employed. ~ George Washington

We do not need to divide America over who served and how. I have personally always believed that many served in many different ways. Someone who was deeply against the war in 1969 or 1970 may well have served their country with equal passion and patriotism by opposing the war as by fighting in it. ~ John F. Kerry

When I was a teenager I took freedom for granted until I got through the army and saw what the Nazis had done in Germany. Then I realized that freedom isn't automatic; it has a price.

World War II was a justified and necessary war. Last year I met five survivors of Auschwitz concentration camp. The things that happened to those people should never have happened to any human being.

- Ed Tipper ~ Marcus Brotherton

What we have in the Bush team is a faith-based administration. It launched a faith-based war in Iraq, on the basis of faith-based intelligence, with a faith-based plan for Iraqi reconstruction, supported by faith-based tax cuts to generate faith-based revenues. ~ Thomas Friedman

Since the 1960s, mainstream media has searched out and co-opted the most authentic things it could find in youth culture, whether that was psychedelic culture, anti-war culture, blue jeans culture. Eventually heavy metal culture, rap culture, electronica - they'll look for it and then market it back to kids at the mall. ~ Douglas Rushkoff

We convince ourselves that even our shameless waste, our unchecked consumption and our appalling ignorance of anyplace in the world except our own little corner must continue
or they win! No, when you become smarter and less gluttonous, you win. We all win! ~ Bill Maher

I supported the Iraq resolution, but that was not an approval of war in Iraq and certainly was not approval for an occupation of Iraq. ~ Bob Barr

Formerly when great fortunes were only made in war, war was business; but now when great fortunes are only made by business: Business is war! ~ Christian Nestell Bovee

Competition makes things come out right. Well, what does that mean in health care? More hospitals so they compete with each other. More doctors compete with each other. More pharmaceutical companies. We set up war. Wait a minute, let's talk about the patient. The patient doesn't need a war. ~ Donald Berwick

The United Nations is the best hope to spare humanity from the barbarity of war, from the senseless death, destruction and dislocation it brings about. ~ Alfred-Maurice De Zayas

The conduct of war was so much more interesting than its prevention. ~ Barbara Tuchman

[On World War II:] The war, which destroyed so much of everything, was also constructive, in a way. It established clearly the cold, and finally unhypocritical fact that the most important thing on earth to men today is money. ~ Janet Flanner

Freedom is not a tea party, India. Freedom is a war. ~ Salman Rushdie

During the war, I saw many films that made me fall in love with the cinema. ~ Francois Truffaut