Iraq is a country that has been invaded. It's not a failing state that you want to help. It's a country that was functioning good or bad, with a horrible dictator, but you have invaded.

There is an element of luck, there is an element of trial and error, sometimes you fail, sometimes you succeed. It's not as beautifully simple as it may seem when we are talking about it.

There is also a natural and very, very strong empathy with the underdog, with people who have suffered, people who have been pushed around by foreigners in particular, but also by their own people.

There is a story which is not being told strongly enough of the Afghan employees of the UN inside the country who are saving hundreds of thousands of lives everyday by their bravery and nobody talks of them.

There is a firm, clear commitment to provide resources and ideas to enable us to organize the Afghans towards starting the process of rehabilitation and reconstruction.

I think a failed state is the responsibility of the people who have made that state fail, and those are generally the people of that country.

There is an expression now that is commonly used about these so-called internal conflicts which are not really internal, because they have connections to the outside world.

Of course the UN brings in a lot of moral authority.

What again I tell my people is that no matter how much you know, it's never enough. You will always discover, after the fact, that you've missed something.

To leave Afghanistan as a playground for terrorists and adventurers was simply not possible anymore.

When you go from one place to another, you go with experience, you don't go with prescriptions.

You are dealing with people who have taken the responsibility of killing their own because they think that they are right, they think that they are serving the interests of their people. They not going to give that up easily, just because you've shown up.

A fly cannot go in unless it stops somewhere; therefore weapons, fuel, food, money will not go to Afghanistan unless the neighbors of Afghanistan are working, are cooperating, either being themselves the origin or the transit.

Afghanistan is a land-locked country.

At times one feels that what is being said in the West is that the fact that you are a Muslim predisposes you to this blind, stupid terrorism.