Ronald Neumann Quotations

When you think four years ago Taliban were here, women were being stoned to death at halftime at football games, now you have women running polling centers and women voting and men voting and, I think, each one voting for some of the others as well.

There is certainly more violence and there are violent elements trying to come back, ... I think this is a situation that will probably be difficult for some time.

There are people who will try to kill candidates and who will try to stop the election, ... They will fail. They have absolutely no chance of stopping this election.

significant ... advance on the road to democracy.

I have absolutely no doubt we will maintain the United States and allied military capabilities to confront any challenge.

What you have here is already so much better,

Pakistan is doing a lot more than they were doing, ... They have put thousands of troops on the border. ... I think this is a considerable effort. It is going in the right direction.

We have to keep a force that's agile enough to back up NATO.

We have more Afghan police, more Afghan army, more American army, more international forces. I believe we will have a secure elections,

Ultimately, you want people to believe in the system. The whole thing makes no sense if people don't believe that their vote counts.

It would be useful to lay down an internationally agreed set of goals, benchmarks.

These expectations of the people will have to be met. What the election does is give the Afghan people a new channel to voice their opinions and demands.

These expectations of the people will have to be met,

This is too critical to just say we want victory but we want it on the cheap.

It's very clear the international community is still solidly here and the next piece we have to do is to try to, in a post-Bonn conference, define a little more sharply what the steps need to be,

The international community is going to have to stay involved for a long time,

If you're going to go down this path of encouraging democracy, then to a very large extent you just suck it up.

I don't think that any election is perfect, ... historic milestone in Afghan history.

I do not at this point know absolutely if it is true, but it may well be. If it is true, it is disgusting and contrary to our values and to our laws. I know that my military colleagues are taking it extremely seriously and there will be a very full and complete investigation.