A Quote by Erna Solberg

Afghanistan has safe zones... so it's possible to send grown-ups back to that country. We can't empty Afghanistan.

Erna Solberg

Quote Topics

Afghanistan Back Country Empty Grown Grown-Up Grown-Ups Possible Safe Send Ups

Quote Author

Erna Solberg
Norwegian - Politician
Born: February 24, 1961

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.

Hamid Karzai

Afghanistan's winters in the north are legendarily harsh, and southern Afghanistan, by contrast, is bleak desert. These difficulties are compounded by the fact that Afghanistan is one of the world's most heavily mined countries.

Peter Bergen

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

The U.S. must continue to carefully withdraw troops from Afghanistan at a pace based on assessment of the ground conditions so we do not leave our Afghan partners unable to guarantee long-term security or risk Afghanistan becoming a terrorist safe haven again.

Brian Schatz

Johnny Apple, a New York Times correspondent, wrote a front-page story saying Afghanistan could be a quagmire and he was mocked and derided. What is certainly true is that all sorts of resources that would have been used in Afghanistan were diverted to Iraq. Would those resources have helped? Almost undoubtedly. 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

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.In my new book, I open with a quote from Donald Rumsfeld. In October 2001, he said of Afghanistan: "It's not a quagmire." Ten years later there are 150,000 Western troops there.

Michael Hastings

We know definitively that Al-Qaida isn't all over Afghanistan anymore. According to CIA estimates, there are less than a hundred Al-Qaida members in the entire country. Most of them are in Pakistan. So, it's hard for me to understand why we're still fighting there and sending in more and more troops. I would get out of Afghanistan as quickly as possible.

Jimmy Carter

Michael Hastings

Afghanistan has moved forward and Afghanistan will defend itself. And the progress that we have achieved, the Afghan people will not allow it to be put back or reversed.

Hamid Karzai

If Afghan soldiers continue to kill American soldiers as is happening these days, it can hardly be assumed that they will stay in Afghanistan in the long term. And what role are they to play? There will not be enough soldiers to ensure the security of the country. But will the US still be permitted to kill terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan with un-manned drones? That could worsen the situation in the neighboring states and they could view Afghanistan as a threat.

Ahmed Rashid

Ultimately, it's not our responsibility to turn Afghanistan into a 21st-century, vibrant, economic, liberal democracy with a little L. Our responsibility is to keep Americans safe, to make sure we don't have a failed state in a region. It's not our responsibility to reconstruct Afghanistan.

Martha McSally

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

Our failed population-centric approach to Afghanistan has only led to missed opportunities, which is why Afghanistan depends on donors for 90% of government revenues. A smarter, trade-centric approach will boost Afghanistan's long-run viability by weaning it off donor welfare dependency.

Erik Prince

America does not hold to the colonial tradition. America came, liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban and al-Qaida, came to an arrangement with Hamid Karzai, wanted to organize elections as soon as possible and then withdraw. The Bush administration thought that once there is a democracy, everything else will fall into place. If today you speak to the architects of the 2001 Afghanistan Conference in Bonn, they will tell you that instead of being fixated on elections, we should have built a State in Afghanistan with an army and a police force first.

Ahmed Rashid

Involvement in Afghanistan, I thought, was totally warranted. We were attacked, we attacked back, but after six months of being in Afghanistan, I thought we had pretty well effectively wiped out al Qaeda.