John Abizaid Quotes

The war in Afghanistan is too important to be reduced to a political football. We are fighting there to protect our national security. We are confronting the Taliban-led insurgency to prevent terrorists returning to that country.

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.

I'm afraid you're gonna have to see more American military involvement in order to keep ISIS from spreading even further.

The war on terror is the war in Afghanistan.

The documentary feature film 'Legion of Brothers' tells the stories of the handful of U.S. Special Forces soldiers who, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, went into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and, within a matter of weeks, overthrew the Taliban regime.

Afghanistan and Iraq were lumped together in what was called a 'global war on terrorism.'

Involvement in Afghanistan, I thought, was totally warranted. We were attacked, we attacked back, but after six months of being in Afghanistan, I thought we had pretty well effectively wiped out al Qaeda.

If the U.S. wants to destroy ISIS, it can destroy ISIS. We won't end terrorism around the world. But we can destroy ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Prominent generals are telling us that. Prominent national-security strategists are telling us that. So let's do it.

I was in Saudi Arabia on 9/11 and was part of the initial leadership team to execute the initial combat operations in Afghanistan.

On military battlefields, we have defeated radical Islamic forces every time we have seriously gone after them, from Iraq to Afghanistan.

After 9/11, a few hundred CIA and Special Operations personnel, backed by airpower and Afghan militias, devastated Taliban and al-Qaeda forces. That effort has since turned into a conventional Pentagon nation-building exercise and gone backward.

If the United States had not intervened in Afghanistan, then obviously, we would have then allowed the attacks of 9/11 to go unanswered. I don't think most of Americans wanted that to happen.

Iraq and Afghanistan will, over time, become stable. But the War on Terror will continue long after Iraq and Afghanistan have had success in standing up their own governments.

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.

As we continue to make great progress in the war on terror, now more than ever, it is important that members of the international community stand-by and bolster the efforts of the emerging diplomatic leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Winning in Afghanistan is having a country that is stable enough to ensure that there is no safe haven for Al Qaida or for a militant Taliban that welcomes Al Qaida. That's really the measure of success for the United States.

Clearly the Secretary of Defense, my boss, would like nothing better than to get Osama bin Laden and to get... to ensure the complete defeat of al-Qaida, because we know that al-Qaida is planning operations against the United States even as we speak here.

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.

There is no doubt ISIS poses a clear, direct threat to the United States, and decisive action is badly needed.

The Pentagon still has not given a name to the Iraqi war. Somehow 'Operation Re-elect Bush' doesn't seem to be popular.

The War on Terror is one of the most critical national security efforts in our history.

This war in Iraq is part of a larger effort to remove this terrorist threat from the planet.

After September 11, when the United States took action to overthrow the Taliban, our interests and Iran's aligned, and we were able to coordinate quietly but effectively.

We fully support the strikes against terrorist targets, not against the country, not against the culture, not against a religion, but against an enemy of them all.

When we started after Osama bin Laden, we really decided to go after the Taliban. And we seemed to be content to kick the Taliban out of Kandahar. And then we let Osama bin Laden escape from Tora Bora.