“The majority of Afghans do not see the Americans as foreign occupiers ...” — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon Quote

“The majority of Afghans do not see the Americans as foreign occupiers who must be defeated. Instead, they are hungry for the Americans to step up and help them make their country safer, their government cleaner and their economy stronger. They are disappointed because the international community has done too little, not too much.”

“When the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996 after a searing, four-year civil war, they immediately instituted laws which fit their utopic vision of the time of Islam's founding more than 1,300 years earlier. Afghan women's lives offered the most visible sign of the imagined past to which Afghanistan's present was to be returned.”

“The Taliban, broadly speaking, are Afghans - farmers, subsistence farmers. As I say, most of those people can't find the United States on the map. Al Qaeda, traditionally, are much more educated, middle-class people, often from Egypt, from Saudi Arabia, North Africa.”

“When I talk to another Afghan I am his or her equal and that moves me to tears.”

“I wasn't a hoarder, but I was on my way. I went to thrift stores and never didn't buy something. A lot of cat figurines, needlepoint, afghans. Grandma stuff, I suppose.”