What we have done, I think, is build a model from a lot of hard lessons in Afghanistan and Iraq but in other places around the world, where we are working with them in an advisory capacity.
There were between 46 and 52 drone strikes under the [George W. ] Bush administration. And now there are over 400 - that's not counting Afghanistan. So this has been tremendously increased under the [Barack] Obama administration.
The market system rewards me outlandishly for what I do, but that doesn't mean I'm any more deserving of a good life than a teacher or a doctor or someone who fights in Afghanistan.
I would not like to be in President Obama's position in making choices on Afghanistan.
Now, here we are, and we have Obama in office, and he has drawn down forces in Iraq - which is a plan that was on Bush's desk the day that he left office. The forces in Afghanistan, he's going to draw down, too. But at the same time, Obama has also expanded a lot of the more unsavory, covert aspects of the wars, with the drone strikes and some of the night-raid missions.
My central focus is what are we doing to protect the American people and the American homeland? Afghanistan and Pakistan are critical elements in that process.
The misery in war-torn Afghanistan is reminiscent of images from the Thirty Years' War.
I vowed to our countrymen that I would do everything I could to protect the American people. . . That's why I said to Afghanistan: If you harbor a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorist.
There are no barriers to entries. Think of this as Linux in terms of software. Anyone can have part of the operating system so long as you pledge allegiance to the ideas. Previously, if you wanted to join al Qaeda, you had to travel to an al Qaeda safe haven, probably in northern Pakistan or Afghanistan. Now all you have to do is get a gun, choose a target, and carry out an attack.
Most people are not affected by [the death penalty]. It's like how many people are actually sent to Iraq and Afghanistan? Such a small percentage.
It's important to understand the origins of ISIS were in the chaos of Iraq and Libya, and the origins of Al Qaeda were in Afghanistan.
I think all of us who have been in Afghanistan on the ground multiple times know that what we're doing there on the ground is just not sustainable.
The fact is that the American government and NATO have destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan. Their next targets will be Syria and Iran.
To me, you can't win. You can't win. There's a war in Iraq; there's no way that they're ending that. The war in Afghanistan is still going on. There's no way that's going to end anytime soon. You can complain about it, you can throw rocks at it, but you really have to come to the conclusion that this is a really twisted place sometimes and some stuff you're not going to win.
Some have called Afghanistan 'the graveyard of empires,' and it probably is the graveyard of empires.
We [Afghanistan government] were in the process of cleaning up the government when these attacks happened in the north - not only in Kunduz, but also in other provinces. Our special forces are limited - we cannot be everywhere at the same time and we had to defend every district regardless of how insignificant it might be, because of the very social and political makeup of this country.
Without U. S. troops, Afghanistan, like Iraq, could descend into chaos.
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.
When an army unit returns from service in Iraq or Afghanistan, it barely gets a breather before it begins training for its next deployment.
We argued, as did the security services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain. Tragically Londoners have now paid the price of the Government ignoring such warnings.