Afghanistan Quotes - Page 20

• An information operations team was sent to Afghanistan to conduct various psychological operations on the Afghans and Taliban. The team was then asked not to focus on the Taliban but on manipulating senators into giving more funds and troops [to the war].

  Michael Hastings

  War, Team, Giving

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• 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

  Troops, Looks, Pakistan

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Afghanistan would have been difficult enough without Iraq. Iraq made it impossible. The argument that had we just focused on Afghanistan we'd now be okay is persuasive, but it omits the fact that we weren't supposed to get involved in nation-building in Afghanistan.

  Michael Hastings

  Iraq, Facts, Impossible

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Whether or not Afghanistan would be a peaceful nation-state had we not gone into Iraq I doubt. Afghanistan is going to be Afghanistan, no matter how hard we try to make it something else.

  Michael Hastings

  Iraq, Peaceful, Doubt

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Inside the White House there were always extreme amounts of doubt about whether they should be escalating in Afghanistan. In fact, most of the president's advisers said, "This is probably not going to work." A lot of people in the military said, "This is probably not going to work."

  Michael Hastings

  Military, White, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• 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

  War, Fighting, Wmd

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The other problem is that the priority of many soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan is operational security: not getting killed. Now that is a very valid priority, but it has to be balanced against many other priorities, especially not killing too many locals in the process.

  Yaroslav Trofimov

  Iraq, Priorities, Soldier

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• In the occupation in Afghanistan, there are tragedies as well. It's not as bad as in Iraq because there are fewer American troops. But, as I describe in the book, going out on patrol and coming into a village, the soldiers found a stash of documents and decided this was Taliban propaganda.

  Yaroslav Trofimov

  Book, Iraq, Soldier

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• But in Afghanistan, the general rule was that since you were fighting the Taliban, which was not a lawful government force, the Geneva Conventions did not apply. And that led to a lot of excesses in Afghanistan, excesses like Abu Ghraib that were already well-publicized.

  Yaroslav Trofimov

  Fighting, Government, Excess

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• First of all, we occupied Afghanistan and Iraq and I'm not even talking about the past occupation of them, I'm just talking about currently. And we all know that occupations, in military terms, comes down basically to policing, so you have an army basically functioning as a police force in these foreign territories as part of foreign policy. I'm not knocking that down, I'm just observing.

  Oren Moverman

  Military, Army, Past

  "Rampart Director, Oren Moverman Interview". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• The drones are really interesting - how have the troops withdrawn from Afghanistan? Because we've upped the drone strikes and most of the country doesn't even really know what that means or who we're killing or... it's such a new weapon that we don't know what the long term impacts of that kind of military action is going to be.

  Ethan Hawke

  Country, Military, Mean

  "Ethan Hawke Talks Regression" by Josh Lasser, www.ign.com. February 4, 2016.

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• I would not like to be in President Obama's position in making choices on Afghanistan.

  Mark Danner

  Choices, President, Position

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• One is the goals of 9/11 itself, of that attack was to draw the United States into Afghanistan to fight a counterinsurgency as the Soviets had done before them.

  Mark Danner

  Fighting, Goal, United States

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I think that the first point to be made is there is no "solution" in Afghanistan. Solution I put in quotes. We live in an op-ed culture, which is to say, you always need to have a solution. The last third of that op-ed piece needs to say, "Do this, this, this and this." There is no this, this, this, and this, that will make Afghanistan right.

  Mark Danner

  Thinking, Needs, Culture

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• think that the external situation has also changed somewhat. The reduction of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan has, in a sense, reduced how inflamed the situation on the Pakistani border regions was and is.

  Mohsin Hamid

  Thinking, Borders, Reduction

  "Pakistan Ends Another Year With A Horrifying Attack". "Morning Edition" with Renee Montagne, www.npr.org. December 30, 2015.

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• OK, so $1 trillion is what it costs to run the federal government for one year. So this money's going to run through September of 2016. Half of the trillion dollars goes to defense spending and the Pentagon. The other half goes to domestic spending - everything from prisons to parks. So there's also about 74 billion in there that goes to the military operations that we have ongoing in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria.

  Susan Davis

  Running, Military, Iraq

  "Here's What You Should Know About The $1.8 Trillion Spending Bill". "All Things Considered", www.npr.org. December 21, 2015.

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• It is clear that several countries, in the Balkans for example, need to be considered countries of safe origin. But others like, in my opinion, Eritrea, undoubtedly need to be considered a country of origin with a valid claim to asylum. And with a third group of states, like Nigeria for example, each individual case needs to be evaluated. Then there are also very controversial cases like Afghanistan. In any case, united European action is needed. This argument for Europeanization may sound utopian, but there is no alternative.

  Paolo Gentiloni

  Country, Alternatives, Eritrea

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• We have a strong military deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan. In countries like Syria, we need a diplomatic breakthrough to end the war. In Libya, the country must first of all be stabilized to stop IS. This means supporting the Libyan government, including in terms of security. We don't want to repeat the mistakes of the past in that country. The situation is extremely dangerous and the next days could be decisive.

  Paolo Gentiloni

  Country, Strong, Mistake

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• The president [Barack Obama] decided to leave more troops than he had originally planned in Afghanistan. We have a very cooperative government there, with Ashraf Ghani and his top - his top partner, Abdullah. And they are doing their very best. And the Afghan army is actually fighting. The Afghan army is taking heavy losses defending Afghan territory.

  Hillary Clinton

  Loss, Army, Fighting

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• We believe that introducing surface-to-air missiles in Syria is going to change the balance of power on the ground. It will allow the moderate opposition to be able to neutralize the helicopters and aircraft that are dropping chemicals and have been carpet-bombing them, just like surface-to-air missiles in Afghanistan were able to change the balance of power there.

  Adel al-Jubeir

  Believe, Air, Balance

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• After the revolution of 1979, Iran embarked on a policy of sectarianism. Iran began a policy of expanding its revolution, of interfering with the affairs of its neighbors, a policy of assassinating diplomats and of attacking embassies. Iran is responsible for a number of terrorist attacks in the Kingdom, it is responsible for smuggling explosives and drugs into Saudi Arabia. And Iran is responsible for setting up sectarian militias in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen, whose objective is to destabilize those countries.

  Adel al-Jubeir

  Country, Iran, Iraq

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• I mean, you can agree or disagree with Iraq or Afghanistan, but by the way, now the great campaigning cause out there is the absence of intervention in Syria. And then in Libya, it's partial intervention. And that doesn't really explain why some countries that have literally nothing to do with the interventions in the Middle East end up getting targeted.

  Tony Blair

  Country, Mean, Iraq

  "Tony Blair Works To Define The Problem Of Islamist Extremism". Interview with Steve Inskeep, www.npr.org. February 25, 2016.

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• As a critic, I try to stay neutral about movies before I see them, but I really wanted "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" to be great. It's based on a barbed memoir by Kim Barker called "The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days In Afghanistan And Pakistan." And its stars Tina Fey, out of her comfort zone, just as Barker was a fish out of water when, in 2004, she began covering the Afghanistan occupation for the Chicago Tribune.

  David Edelstein

  Stars, Water, Trying

  "Tina Fey's War-Zone 'Foxtrot' Falls Out Of Step". "Fresh Air", www.npr.org. March 4, 2016.

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• The movie's only serious criticism is reserved for Baker's television network, which doesn't think Americans care about Afghanistan - kind of hypocritical given this film's lack of substance.

  David Edelstein

  Thinking, Criticism, Serious

  "Tina Fey's War-Zone 'Foxtrot' Falls Out Of Step". "Fresh Air" with Dave Davies, www.npr.org. March 4, 2016.

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• It's hard for comic actors used to pulling faces just to be on screen, but Tina Fey does a good job. I liked watching her. The part, though, isn't filled in. When Baker announces that she's gotten too used to the madness of Afghanistan, that she's worried she's thinking of it as normal, the sentiment comes out of nowhere. The dramatic arc in "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" is nonexistent. The movie evaporates in the mind like water in the Afghan desert.

  David Edelstein

  Jobs, Thinking, Filled In

  "Tina Fey's War-Zone 'Foxtrot' Falls Out Of Step". "Fresh Air" with Dave Davies, www.npr.org. March 4, 2016.

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