Monday 16 August 2021

What was meant to be the point of the last 20 years in Afghanistan?

SHARE
“Hey man . . . The Taliban is not the North Vietnamese Army, they're not. They're not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There's going to be no circumstance for you to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan."

Joe Biden, July 8, 2021

"This is not Vietnam. The government is not collapsing."

“The future will be determined by the people of Afghanistan, not by somebody sitting behind the desk, dreaming.”

President Ghani, who fled Afghanistan for Uzbekistan yesterday, made these remarks in an interview with the BBC on 22 February 2021.

"A war begun for no wise purpose, carried on with a strange mixture of rashness and timidity, brought to a close after suffering and disaster, without much glory attached either to the government which directed, or the great body of troops which waged it. Not one benefit, political or military, was acquired with this war. Our eventual evacuation of the country resembled the retreat of an army defeated.”

The Reverend G. R. Grieg on the Anglo-Afghan War, 1843.

"The first rule of politics. Don't invade Afghanistan."

Harold Macmillan. I think he said this in the 1980s, but in October 1963, according to William Dalrymple, while handing over the premiership Harold Macmillan said to Alec Douglas-Home, 

“My dear boy, as long as you don’t invade Afghanistan you’ll be absolutely fine.”

He didn't and he was.


1 comment: