Political Quotes

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to remind folks that we've learned some lessons through these years of conflict. I want to remind folks of what General Petraeus has learned through that process and knowing that counterterrorism has not been successful in the long term in getting us to where we need to be strategically in these areas and that the counterinsurgency strategy has worked. What we are seeing in Afghanistan is just that. Let's make sure that we're allowing that to work. When I was there recently, we've seen what's happening. We are training the Afghans to be able to take over their country, to make sure that they're going to be successful in maintaining order in that country; making sure that, as we have pushed terrorists out, those terrorists stay out. That is a long-term successful strategy--to secure, hold, build, and transition. Let's make sure that we allow that to happen. It's critical that we don't make an arbitrary transition to another strategy that we've seen in the past hasn't worked. And all of us want to make sure that we are getting our troops out of there. {time} 2140 But we also want to make sure that those sacrifices are not in vain. And we can go back and forth about what the end result is, but the end result is that we want to make sure that we're successful there in the long term. The Acting CHAIR. The time of the gentleman has expired.”