Instead, we did take our eye off the ball. We decided, instead of finishing the job in Afghanistan, to go into Iraq. And today, unfortunately, if you look at the situation on the ground, it is a mess.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
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.
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.
We took our eye off the ball as a company.
We needed to go back on the offense and offer clear leadership on Iraq.
No one talked about the fact that in this year under the Obama administration you've seen the highest casualties in Afghanistan. And the fact that it took him almost 90 days to figure out what his strategy is going to be was absolutely appalling.
One only has to look at the debacle that has unfolded in Iraq after the withdrawal of U.S. troops at the end of 2011 to have a sneak preview of what could take place in an Afghanistan without some kind of residual American presence.
I think we need to just be very clear about what we're trying to do in Afghanistan. Frankly, we're not trying to create the perfect democracy. We're never going to create some ideal society. We are simply there for our own national security.
It was not in our interest to enter Iraq in the first place.
We were in opposition to the decision to go to war. But after the war happened, it was clear that you could not sit and look-there would be a breeding ground for terrorism or a new collapsed or failed state named Iraq!
We didn't do anything wrong, but among the lessons learned, given the magnitude of the problems we now face in Afghanistan, a major U.S. force on the ground would convince the world we were in for the long-haul recovery of a country devastated by 21 years of warfare.