“I was distressed that after 9/11, when the United States was attacked ...” — Alice Walker Quote

I was distressed that after 9/11, when the United States was attacked by terrorists, the United States' response was to attack Afghanistan, where some of the terrorists had been.

I'm sure we, the American people, are the butt of jokes by those in power.

It's an awful feeling to write something that you feel is really important... and to feel that you're being published by people who really don't get it and/or don't really care.

I'm for women choosing whatever they want to do but they have to really know what they are doing.

I started writing as a child. But I didn't think of myself actually writing until I was in college. And I had gone to Africa as a sophomore or something - no, maybe junior - and wrote a book of poems. And that was my beginning. I published that book.

To me, what success looks like is not to believe that Afghanistan can become a unified, Western-style democracy with a developed-country economy just yet. I think success in the American interest is some level of assurance that it's not going to be a place that again leads to an attack on the American homeland.

If the United States is treating Afghanistan as a sovereign country it has to prove it.

Mattis has been sharply critical of President Barack Obama's policies on Iran and Obama's capping of troop numbers and campaign end-dates in theaters of war such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Mattis also appears to be a skeptic of the Obama-era policy of putting women into combat roles.

I didn't vote for Bush, and I'm not happy particularly that he's president. But I will say I'm impressed that he didn't start bombing Afghanistan the day after Sept. 11. The more time that passes without him bombing Afghanistan, the more I respect him.