Quotes by Richard Holbrooke

Richard Holbrooke1: We are not trying to win this war militarily, … but some kind of political element to this is essential and we are looking at every aspect of this. We are talking to all our other nations about it.

Fareed Zakaria (CNN): What do mean when you say you don’t want to win this militarily?

Holbrooke: I didn’t say we don’t want to win this militarily. I said we can’t win it militarily because a pure military victory is not possible, as Gen. [David] Petraeus and his colleagues have repeatedly said... Everybody understands that the Taliban is part of the fabric of recent Afghan political life... They were a government that controlled the country until 9/11.

• 1. U.S. special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan