14 Quotes by Dexter Filkins

Talking to [him] that day, and [him] and the other Talibs, it seemed obvious enough that what lay at the foundation of the Taliban’s rule was fear, but not fear of the Taliban themselves, at least not in the beginning. No; it was fear of the past. Fear that the past would return, that it would come back in all its disaggregated fury. That the past would become the future. The beards, the burqas, the whips, the stones; anything, anything you want. Anything but the past.

I joined the Taliban because they were stronger,' [he] said. 'I'm joining the Northern Alliance because they are stronger now'.

Talking to [him] that day, and [him] and the other Talibs, it seemed obvious enough that what lay at the foundation of the Taliban’s rule was fear, but not fear of the Taliban themselves, at least not in the beginning. No; it was fear of the past. Fear that the past would return, that it would come back in all its disaggregated fury. That the past would become the future. The beards, the burqas, the whips, the stones; anything, anything you want. Anything but the past

The most basic barrier was language itself, very few Americans in Iraq whether soldiers or diplomats or news paper reporters could speak more than a few words of Arabic. A remarkable number of them didn't even have translators. That meant for many Iraqis the typical 19 year old army corporal from South Dakota was not a youthful innocent carrying Americas good will, he was a terrifying combination of firepower and ignorance.

I think - I think the real nightmare place now is less Afghanistan than it is Pakistan. I mean, again, Pakistan is this gigantic country, deeply troubled, kind of almost ungovernable, sitting on top of probably 50 or 60 nuclear warheads. Nobody really knows where the warheads are; the Americans certainly don't know where they are.

It is one of the great ironies of the American war in Iraq - was that the guys who really got the most out of it were the Iranians. And they have us to thank for that. Yeah, I mean we basically put Maliki in power in 2006, but he has been - he's really not a friend of the United States. He's a friend of the Iranian regime.

Let me just say, I think there's a reasonable criticism to be made of the Obama administration on the way that it left Iraq.

The American surge of combat forces into Baghdad that was ordered by President Bush worked. And there was a calm, a relative calm that descended on the country kind of late 2008. That pretty much held until the last American combat soldiers left at the end of 2011.

The overriding goal of counterinsurgency is to make friends: You make friends with the people; you isolate the insurgents.