It appears to me we haven't learned very much.

We didn't do anything wrong, but among the lessons learned, given the magnitude of the problems we now face in Afghanistan, a major U.S. force on the ground would convince the world we were in for the long-haul recovery of a country devastated by 21 years of warfare.

You have to look at the history of the Middle East in particular. It has been one of failure and frustration, of feudalism and tribalism.

The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity that would be clearly understood.

You know, it's very clear, as one looks back on history again of the Cold War that, following the crisis in Cuba, following the Khrushchev - beating down of Jack Kennedy in Vienna, that President Kennedy believed that we had to join the battle for the Third World, and the next crisis that developed in that regards was Vietnam.

We didn't lose Vietnam. We quit Vietnam.