Alice Walker Quotes

Four years ago, I promised to end the war in Iraq. We did. I promised to refocus on the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11. We have. We've blunted the Taliban's momentum in Afghanistan, and in 2014, our longest war will be over. A new tower rises above the New York skyline, al Qaeda is on the path to defeat, and Osama bin Laden is dead.

The relevance for 9/11 is that what 9/11 marked was the beginning of a struggle in which the terrorists come at us and strike us here on our home territory. And it's a global operation. It doesn't know national boundaries or national borders.

Before 9/11, absolutely, there were concerns about terrorism; but the world fundamentally changed.

For a generation, terrorists learned they could make war on free nations without fear of war in return. On September 12, the terrorists got war in return.

There is a direct line relationship between what happened in Afghanistan in the work up to 11 September 2001 and what we're doing in Afghanistan today.

On September 11, 2001, we thought we were going to be attacked many, many times between then and now. We haven't been. I believe we had a president who made the right decision at the right time... to put us on offense against terrorists.

Because of what happened on 9/11, a lot of our resources, our money and our people were dedicated to the terrorism fight.

The attacks of 9/11 came out of Afghanistan. It was a failed state, a rogue nation. That's why al Qaeda was there in the first place.

Well, our position, and our chairman has talked about this extensively, is that we had a lot of intelligence prior to 9/11. We knew that two al Qaeda operatives who ultimately participated in the 9/11 disaster were in the United States. We didn't find them.

I believe, based on the activities, and I am not an expert on terrorism by any stretch, but I believe that when they attacked the United States and they attacked New York and Washington, D.C., they thought they could defeat us.

September the 11th was a huge shock in the United States. It was the first time you had been hit at home in your own territory by terrorist on this scale.

With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got.

We know that after September 11, there were still terrorists around. We do get continuing information that they're intent on causing some damage and harm to not only U.S. interests but allied interests.

We live in a world where terror has become a too familiar part of our vocabulary. The terror of 9/11, in which al-Qaeda's attacks on America launched the nation into three wars - against Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Islamic State.

Our country was hit on 9/11, 2001. Everybody in the world knows that. It hasn't been easy to deal with a different kind of enemy, but that is what we have, a different kind of enemy.

The United States was an innocent victim after September 11. It had never attacked or occupied Afghanistan. So therefore it had no choice but to go after the aggressors.

Bin Laden, who was in his country, attacked and damaged our Pentagon, and killed our soldiers right out here at the Pentagon. But his pentagon no longer exists. It is rubble.

We told the Taliban in no uncertain terms that if this happened, it’s their ass. No difference between the Taliban and al Qaeda now. They both go down.

Your first priority is to go after bin Laden.

Your biggest threat is bin Laden!

… the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

As you will recall, soon after the 9/11 attacks, an international coalition led by the United States conducted an impressive campaign to defeat the Taliban, al Qaeda, and other associated extremist groups in Afghanistan.

The Taliban didn't attack us on 9/11 - Al-Qaeda did. That's why I and other people joined the military - to go after Al Qaeda. Not the Taliban.

I think it is important to recall the context of those challenging times immediately following 9/11. For me, I had just returned to Washington from an overseas posting and I reported for duty on the morning of 9/11. I knew in my gut when I saw the video of the first plane hitting the tower in Manhattan that it was bin Laden.

Iraq broke our back in terms of counterterrorism. There's no doubt about it. The first thing, though, that hurt us was the fact that the U.S. military was absolutely unprepared to do anything on 9/11 - or 9/12 or 9/13. And by the time we actually attacked Afghanistan, al Qaeda and the Taliban had dispersed.