Political Quotes

“Every dollar we spend in Afghanistan, every life we sacrifice there is a tragic waste that does not enhance the security of the United States. We were attacked on 9/11 by al Qaeda. Al Qaeda had bases in Afghanistan. It made sense to go in and destroy those bases, and we did. But those bases are no longer there. They are in Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia, and we are not invading those countries. Why do we undertake to invent the corrupt government and try to impose it on the country? Afghanistan is in the middle of a 35-year civil war. We have no business intervening in that civil war. We have no ability and no necessity to win it for one side or the other. This whole idea of counterinsurgency, that we are going to persuade the people left alive after our firepower is applied to love the government that we like, is absurd. At this point we must recognize that rebuilding Afghanistan is both beyond our ability and irrelevant to our purpose of preventing terrorist attacks on the United States. We should support this amendment. We should support our troops. We should bring them home now.”