Word: aways
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...this mission that I have seen among so many people involved, right after I was told I was going to be sent here. I started getting e-mails and phone calls from people I knew who wanted to come. And these were people who had been here before. Many away from their families for a long time. One of my aides, who had only six months before come back from a tough assignment in Samarra, Iraq - he volunteered to go. And the energy that I found in that group of people and here in the embassy. It's not what...
...were burn wounds. What that did for me was, first off, you watch your soldiers who had just died, and you watch your soldiers die over a period of time, and you watch those who are significantly permanently injured - amputees, the horrific impact of burns - but what I took away from that was the importance of the team...
...What happened right there was that the team came together. They all came together in this sense of, we are going to take care of each other. We sent our own paratroopers to bury each of our own killed. What I took away from that was, as you are going to do anything difficult, as you are going to steel yourself for anything that is going to be hard, you build that team first. You can't prepare for an accident. What you prepare is the people in the team and the trust between them, and that will then withstand...
...that? In the most basic way, we provide an environment in which they can set up enough rules of law and have justice. But we can't just go in and say, "O.K., we provided security, you guys have a good day," and walk away. It's so interrelated that we have to do it in partnership with the Afghan government and all the different agencies that bring expertise to help set up rule of law. It's got to be done in partnership. If you go in and provide security, and there is a lag in the time...
...countergovernment feeling there, but it wasn't ideological. It certainly wasn't Islamic extremism. And we told them we were going to bring them a road. And they said, "Oh no, no roads. If you put a road here, people will drive up and take our timber." Right away that teaches you that if you don't understand, and you put in a road - just like Greg Mortenson found out [when] he wanted to build a school but the villagers needed a bridge - sometimes you have to stop and figure things out. They are not illogical. They are rational...