Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Negotiating with the Taliban must be done from a position of strength. Negotiating from a position of weakness would be a disaster.
Never short of guns and guerrillas, Afghanistan has proven fertile ground for a host of insurgent groups in addition to the Taliban.
Just in relation to women, it's not that huge an imaginative leap to see the connection between the Taliban and the Catholic Church.
When US-led forces toppled the Taliban government in November 2001, Afghans celebrated the downfall of a reviled and discredited regime.
I have a lot of security - I lost my mother to the Taliban because of a lack of security - and that explains partly why I can be so vocal.
The Taliban didn't attack us on 9/11 - Al-Qaeda did. That's why I and other people joined the military - to go after Al Qaeda. Not the Taliban.
The Taliban are terrible shots. At the end of some long patrols, we'd be walking through the fields and get shot at - and we'd just keep walking.
If we're so cruel to minorities, why do they keep coming here? Why aren't they sneaking across the Mexican border to make their way to the Taliban?
Without U.S. forces in the country, there is a strong possibility Afghanistan could host a reinvigorated Taliban allied to a reinvigorated al Qaeda.
People will politicize religion; we see it in every faith, in every religion. We see it with Pat Robertson, in my opinion, and we see it with the Taliban.
The armies, the difference of all of those armies that had been fighting each other and the Taliban took advantage of that to rule over the whole country.
Some of the generals are saying, 'We're making progress. We are clearing an area.' But you really don't defeat the Taliban by clearing an area. They move.
For years, Hizb-I-Islami fighters have had a reputation for being more educated and worldly than their Taliban counterparts, who are often illiterate farmers.
The Justices are currently considering a case, argued last month, which seeks to extend the writ of habeas corpus to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees at Guantanamo.
A victory for the Taliban in Afghanistan would have catastrophic consequences for the world - particularly for South Asia, for Central Asia, and for the Middle East.
Rebuilding Afghanistan is not going to be solved by pouring billions in. Getting rid of the Taliban does not rid us of the problems of fundamentalism and instability.
The condition that the Taliban part with al Qaeda is not just a condition, it is an objective. We must convince them that al Qaeda ideology and dogma will not help them.
The first time I visited Afghanistan in May 2000, I was 26 years old, and the country was under Taliban rule. I went there to document Afghan women and landmine victims.
After September 11, when the United States took action to overthrow the Taliban, our interests and Iran's aligned, and we were able to coordinate quietly but effectively.
Since 1996, the Feminist Majority Foundation has been immersed in a campaign to support Afghan women and girls in their fight against the brutal oppression of the Taliban.
There has not yet been a major ground offensive battle... There are, we know, negotiations going on between the opposition forces and the Taliban leadership for surrender.
The book came after the fall of the Taliban, it says something about Afghan family life. Those kind of stories - what happens behind the scenes on a TV screen - are important.
I would like people to have an appreciation for what happened to women under the Taliban, as in 'A Thousand Splendid Suns.' I hope they get a sense of how connected we all are.
Suppose something would happen to the president, who would be in charge? The Vice President. Joe Biden? You have got to be kidding today when you say the Taliban's not our enemy.
When the Taliban was ruling Afghanistan, women were not allowed to go to school, to work, or even leave the house without a male chaperone. The greatest moment was when that ended.
It is in Pakistan's own interest that the Afghan army is able to fight effectively against the Taliban, which is more likely if they continue to have American advisers at their side.
In Afghanistan, getting shot at was a regular occurrence. I viewed survival as a numbers game. As point man, every time I entered a Taliban compound first, I played the odds in my head.
It is very much in America's national security interests to ensure that the Taliban do not dominate Afghanistan and that neither ISIS nor al Qaeda continues their growth in the country.
People in Afghanistan want peace, including the Taliban. They're also people like we all are. They have families, they have relatives, they have children, they are suffering a tough time.
Well, the reports are correct that we're conducting very robust military operations on the Afghan side of the border in areas where we think al-Qaida is operating and Taliban remnants are.
What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Does the global Left - as well as the Israeli Left - truly not care about the horrific Taliban regime, the terrible oppression of women in Gulf states, and the mass hanging festivals in Iran?
In much of the world, there is a sense of an ultra-powerful CIA manipulating everything that happens, such as running the Arab Spring, running the Pakistani Taliban, etc. That is just nonsense.
I'm not sure whether a person can really gauge the quality of his work by the enemies he's made, but if I somehow upset Hamas and the Taliban and Henry Waxman, I must have done something right.
We don't want the Taliban to put down roots, or the al Qaeda to put down roots in Afghanistan that can facilitate Afghanistan becoming - once again - a launching pad for international terrorism.
We don't see that the Taliban ultimately can succeed, and it's a combination both of what the international community can do to support Afghanistan, not just in the short term, but over the long term.
When we started after Osama bin Laden, we really decided to go after the Taliban. And we seemed to be content to kick the Taliban out of Kandahar. And then we let Osama bin Laden escape from Tora Bora.
The Taliban rose to power in 1996, vowing stability and an end to the violence raging across the country between warring mujahedeen factions, and to implement rule by Sharia law, or strict Islamic rule.
This body, the United States Congress, was united, Republicans and Democrats alike, in taking that action, toppling the Taliban government, and working to try and root out al Qaeda and find Osama bin Laden.
Fighting the Taliban and the various radical organizations on the front lines is like adding a Band-Aid to a cut, it may stop the bleeding but unless you clean it with antiseptic, the germs stay and multiply.
Eighty-five percent cannot read when they enter the security forces of Afghanistan. Why? Because the Taliban withheld education during the period of time in which these men and women would have learned to read.
Unlike other Taliban groups, the Haqqanis' approach to mayhem was worldly and sophisticated: they recruited Arabs, Pakistanis, even Europeans, and they were influenced by the latest in radical Islamist thought.
There was expectations that the fights there, the operation there might be extended for several months, even for several years. But within a few weeks it ended, because obviously the Taliban wasn't a real force.
But here too it should be noted that the President's approach was to first ask the repressive and brutal Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden to us, and only after that government refused to do that did we invade.
I mean, the Taliban, my view is that they have been weakened. We have not seen them able to conduct any kind of organized attack to regain any territory that they've lost. We've seen levels of violence going down.
A key flaw of the Obama administration's approach to Afghanistan has been constantly announcing proposed withdrawal dates for U.S. forces, which has enabled the Taliban to believe they can simply wait out the clock.
As you will recall, soon after the 9/11 attacks, an international coalition led by the United States conducted an impressive campaign to defeat the Taliban, al Qaeda, and other associated extremist groups in Afghanistan.
As far as Iraq, the important thing is that the Taliban is gone in Afghanistan, three-quarters of the al-Qaida leadership is either dead or in jail, and we now have Saudi Arabia working with us, Pakistan working with us.
By the time the United States went to war with Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, I had made three trips to the country. I covered the fall of the Taliban in Kandahar and have been returning routinely for the past 14 years.
Courts are grappling with what it means to be 'part of' al Qaida or the Taliban - every case poses a unique challenge, involving individuals with a different degree and type of connection to these terrorist organizations.