Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Stanley McChrystal On The Afghanistan War: 'We Made It Harder Than It Needed To Be' --- Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal discussed the war in Afghanistan on HuffPost Live Wednesday. -- Stanley McChrystal On The Afghanistan War: 'We Made It Harder Than It Needed To Be' -- "I think the United States went into Afghanistan in a reflexive way after 9/11, clearly, near where the first or the biggest tragedy occurred," McChrystal explained. "We went in to get rid of Al Qaeda, but then we found a deeply damaged nation for which we de facto had assumed some level of moral and physical responsibility." -- "I don't think we did everything right from 2001 to the present," McChrystal continued, "but I think we've done an awful lot of really good things." -- When pressed whether the U.S. presence in fact made things worse in Afghanistan, McChrystal defended American actions. -- "I think that we made it harder than it needed to be, I don't think we made it worse, because if you go in 2001, once the Taliban had left, there was a vacuum and there was chaos and there was physical destruction and the society was literally torn to pieces. So without outside help I don't think they could have suddenly put the pieces back together and moved forward." -- Ultimately, McChrystal concluded, "even though we have made it harder, we have made it better. It's just taken longer and been more costly than anybody would have liked." - More, Watch a clip of McChrystal's interview above, Huffingtonpost, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/21/stanley-mcchrystal-afghanistan-war_n_5366065.html?utm_hp_ref=afghanistan

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