Political Quotes

“That is a very good question. Who are these people and what makes them tick? Why would people who could leave by just not reenlisting keep going back to Iraq and Afghanistan? My view of our forces is that they see the face of the enemy, they believe they have a strategy that is working, and they don't want their kids to go back. So when you use the troops as a reason to shortcut this war, I don't think you are really listening to what they say and what they do. If they were exhausted and hopeless, they would change careers. I have never seen Afghanistan change as much as I have in the last year, and my fear is that the successes we have achieved are going to be compromised for no good reason. Both of us believe that you could, at the end of 2012, if you do this right, remove all of the surge forces. But what we have been trying to argue to the President and anyone else who will listen is that this fighting season and the next fighting season are the best chance we will have in our lifetime to bring about permanent, sustainable change. And I think General Petraeus has been trying to tell the country and the President: Give General Allen the ability to take the fight to the east like we did to the south. From the troops' point of view, the reason they go to Afghanistan and Iraq over and over is they understand this enemy better than you and I. They see what the enemy is capable of doing. They saw it in Anbar, where children were killed in front of their parents by al-Qaida.…”