#afghan

Eventually, I came to understand that a group of people who wield enormous power happen, oddly enough, to espouse some of the very same ideals imparted to me by people in Africa and central Asia who have no power at all. The reason for this, in my view, is that members of the armed forces have worked on the ground-in many cases, during three or four tours of duty-on a level that very few diplomats, academicians, journalists, or policy makers can match. And among other things, this experience has imbued soldiers with the gift of empathy. ↗

— Greg Mortenson

#experience

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

Only poetry, of all the artistic and cultural forms, has a certain freedom of expression in Afghanistan...poetry offers great possibilities for expression; rhetorical figures, and the use of symbols and metaphors do not make the censors' task easy. ↗

— Latif Pedram

#poets #freedom

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

#constructive #critical #extent #going #here

If you're an Afghan village leader in a small town down around Kandahar somewhere, and you know that the footprint is getting smaller for your security, and the Taliban saying don't forget, I'm going to be back real soon, who is your loyalty going to go through? ↗

— Mike Rogers

#around #back #down #footprint #forget

We can't stay in Afghanistan forever. ↗

— James F. Amos

#forever #stay

Perhaps we underestimated the challenges in Afghanistan in the past. That's why we are now strengthening and intensifying our commitment. ↗

— Anders Fogh Rasmussen

#challenges #commitment #in the past #now #our

I try to get over to Iraq and Afghanistan as much as I can. ↗

— R. Lee Ermey

#get #i #i can #iraq #much

Well, first, the situation in Afghanistan is much better than it was. But there is no comparison between Afghanistan and Iraq. Iraq has a bureaucracy, Iraq has wealth. Iraq has an educated class of people who are positioned to come in and take over. ↗

— Peter King

#better #between #bureaucracy #class #come

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

#australia #australian #back #been #both