Working Together to Build a Viable State

May 18, 2010
“This time things will be different, insist the proponents of counterinsurgency. Yet Americans need to look past all the happy talk about winning hearts and minds to see counterinsurgency for what it really is: coercive nation-building. It rests on this underlying premise: We know how you should live your life. It usurps any right to self-determination; it imposes norms. In this case, Western soldiers and civilian cadres are hell-bent on transforming a tribal culture imbued with a traditionalist form of Islam. … The prospect of the United States bankrupting itself through perpetual war provides a great gift to the jihadists. So is the Afghanistan surge working? You bet—just not for us.”
—Andrew J. Bacevich, professor of history and international relations, Boston University, “Is President Obama's Afghanistan Strategy Working?” The Washington Post, May 9, 2010
  • “I think that, when people talk about graveyards of empires, we're not an empire, and we don't desire anything for Afghanistan, except Afghan sovereignty. And I think that changes everything. What we want is an Afghanistan that can defend itself, an Afghanistan that can develop its own resources, human and physical. And so it goes back to strategic partnership. And I think that that allows us a tremendous opportunity to be successful.”
    —Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander, U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, interview with PBS NewsHour, May 13, 2010


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    “We knew at the outset that the task would be difficult. We acknowledged that publicly and privately. We knew this would be a road with many bumps— and there have been many bumps—and that continues to this day. But we are not deterred. We are, to the contrary, determined more than ever to proceed to realize the common objective, which we all share, of a Middle East that is at peace with security and prosperity for the people of Israel, for Palestinians, and for all the people in the region. We will continue our efforts in that regard, undeterred and undaunted by the difficulties, the complexities or the bumps in the road.”—George Mitchell, special envoy for Middle East peace, remarks with Prime Minister Netanyahu, September 29, 2010

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