Military hardliners called me a 'security threat' for promoting peace in South Asia and for supporting a broad-based government in Afghanistan.

Kids coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan deserve to come back to 21st century medical care.

The legal system in Afghanistan is very immature and porous.

The main thing that gives me hope is the media. We have radio TV magazines and books so we have the possibility of learning from societies that are remote from us like Somalia. We turn on the TV and see what blew up in Iraq or we see conditions 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.

Obama is thoroughly mixed up with all these things he's got. He's got to solve Libya. He's got to solve Afghanistan. He's everywhere. And this nation I don't know why it's not showing the leadership and capacity to attend different issues at the same time.

We ought to recognize that we have an offensive responsibility to take the war to the terrorists where they are. That responsibility has waned in the last year as military and intelligence resources were withdrawn from Afghanistan and Pakistan to be used in Iraq.

In Afghanistan there is a plan to build democracy hundreds of thousands of troops are protecting it. There is a plan to rebuild and reconstruct there. But many thousands of Americans die from violence and poverty every year and we don't have a plan for reconstruction at home.

Don't kid yourself. President Obama's decision to withdraw 33 000 troops from Afghanistan before he stands for reelection is not driven by the United States' 'position of strength' in the war zone as much as it is by grim economic and political realities at home.

Now I know there are many Americans who say 'Get out of Afghanistan. Bring 'em all home.' And there are others who say 'Put in hundreds of thousands of more.'

I just think it would be unrealistic to suggest we're going to eliminate every last domestic insurgent in Afghanistan. Certainly the history of the country would indicate that's not a very realistic objective and I think we have to have realistic objectives.

We are particularly interested in the mental health programs and policies that support our troops and their families before during and after deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Many soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from serious long-term physical and mental health problems due to their service. It is unconscionable to cut the already limited health care benefits available to these brave men and women.

Remember the rights of the savage as we call him. Remember that the happiness of his humble home remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan among the winter snows is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God as can be your own.

An interim government was set up in Afghanistan. It included two women one of whom was Minister of Women's Affairs. Man who'd she have to show here ankles to to get that job?

When you decide to get involved in a military operation in a place like Syria you've got to be prepared as we learned from Iraq and Afghanistan to become the government and I'm not sure any country either the United States or I don't hear of anyone else who's willing to take on that responsibility.

A fly cannot go in unless it stops somewhere therefore weapons fuel food money will not go to Afghanistan unless the neighbors of Afghanistan are working are cooperating either being themselves the origin or the transit.

The West has been able to bring Afghanistan a much better health service better education better roads a better economy though some have benefited more some have benefited less from that economic well-being in Afghanistan.

Barack Obama's life was so much simpler in 2009. Back then he had refined the cold act of blaming others for the bad economy into an art form. Deficits? Blame Bush's tax cuts. Spending? Blame the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. No business investment? Blame Wall Street.

If there's ever an example that military power alone cannot be successful in Afghanistan I think it was the Soviet experience.

I feel most empires fell when they started to act human but then look at Russia. They kept a pretty strong hand and they fell from Afghanistan alone because Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. I guess you just can't sustain it.

'Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age' was quite a favourite headline for some wobbly liberals. The slogan does all the work. But an instant's thought shows that Afghanistan is being if anything bombed out of the Stone Age.