The question today is not: Why did we invade Afghanistan? The question is: why are we still in Afghanistan one decade later? Why are we spending $135 billion? Why have we got 130,000 troops on the ground? Why were more people killed last month than in any preceding month of this conflict? How has this happened? The last 20 years has been the age of intervention, and Afghanistan is simply one act in a five-act tragedy. We came out of the end of the Cold War in despair. We faced Rwanda; we faced Bosnia, and then we rediscovered our confidence. In the third act, we went into Bosnia and Kosovo and we seemed to succeed. In the fourth act, with our hubris, our overconfidence developing, we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the fifth act, we plunged into a humiliating mess.
在今天我们的问题不是: 为什么我们要侵略阿富汗? 真正的问题是: 十年之后,为什么我们仍然 呆在那儿? 为什么我们花费 1350亿美金? 为什么我们仍然有13万地面部队? 为什么在 上个月被杀的人 比这次冲突之前的 任何一个月都要多? 这为什么会发生? 过去的20年 已经成为了介入干预的20年 并且阿富汗只是 五个灾难当中的其中一个。 我们绝望的 走出了冷战。 我们面对卢旺达内战; 我们面对波黑战争; 然后我们重新找到了我们的自信。 在第三个行动中,我们进入了波斯尼亚和科索沃 并且我们看起来似乎成功干预了。 在第四个行动中,我们带着傲慢, 和我们过度的自负 入侵了伊拉克和阿富汗。 在第五个行动中, 我们深陷令人蒙羞的困境。
So the question is: What are we doing? Why are we still stuck in Afghanistan? And the answer, of course, that we keep being given is as follows: we're told that we went into Afghanistan because of 9/11, and that we remain there because the Taliban poses an existential threat to global security. In the words of President Obama, "If the Taliban take over again, they will invite back Al-Qaeda, who will try to kill as many of our people as they possibly can." The story that we're told is that there was a "light footprint" initially -- in other words, that we ended up in a situation where we didn't have enough troops, we didn't have enough resources, that Afghans were frustrated -- they felt there wasn't enough progress and economic development and security, and therefore the Taliban came back -- that we responded in 2005 and 2006 with troop deployments, but we still didn't put enough troops on the ground. And that it wasn't until 2009, when President Obama signed off on a surge, that we finally had, in the words of Secretary Clinton, "the strategy, the leadership and the resources." So, as the president now reassures us, we are on track to achieve our goals.
所以真正的问题是:我们到底在干什么? 为什么我们仍然被困在阿富汗? 当然,我们 被给予的答案是 以下几个。 我们说我们进入阿富汗 是因为9/11事件 并且我们仍然呆在那里 因为塔利班对国际安全 构成了生死存亡的威胁。 引用奥巴马总统的话说, “如果塔利班夺回主权的话, 他们会把基地组织请回来, 他们会杀掉 他们能杀掉的所有人。” 我们被告知的故事 在一开始就是一个缺少充分的理由-- 换句话说,我们处在一个 没有足够军队 没有足够资源 阿富汗人都很挫败的绝境之下。 他们觉得情况 与经济和社会安全都没有得到足够的发展 因此塔利班即将回来。 所以我们回应在2005与2006年 军队的部署问题, 但是我们仍然没有部署足够多的地面部队。 并且一直持续到2009年, 当奥巴马签下了扩军合约, 我们终于拥有了, 用国务卿克林顿的话来说, “战略,领导力和资源,” 所以,就像美国总统保证我们的一样, 我们已经在实现目标的正轨上。
All of this is wrong. Every one of those statements is wrong. Afghanistan does not pose an existential threat to global security. It is extremely unlikely the Taliban would ever be able to take over the country -- extremely unlikely they'd be able to seize Kabul. They simply don't have a conventional military option. And even if they were able to do so, even if I'm wrong, it's extremely unlikely the Taliban would invite back Al-Qaeda. From the Taliban's point of view, that was their number one mistake last time. If they hadn't invited back Al-Qaeda, they would still be in power today.
上述所有的这些都是错误的。 每一个声明都是错误的。 阿富汗并没有 构成对 国际社会生死存亡的威胁。 塔利班会夺回政权 是极度不可能的。 他们可以夺取喀布尔也是极度不可能的。 他们根本没有常规的军事解决途径。 并且即使他们可以这么做,如果我说错了, 塔利班会请基地组织回来 也是几乎不可能的。 从塔利班的角度来看, 这是他们以前犯得第一大错误。 如果他们没有请回基地组织, 他们今天还会仍然执政。
And even if I'm wrong about those two things, even if they were able to take back the country, even if they were to invite back Al-Qaeda, it's extremely unlikely that Al-Qaeda would significantly enhance its ability to harm the United States or harm Europe. Because this isn't the 1990s anymore. If the Al-Qaeda base was to be established near Ghazni, we would hit them very hard, and it would be very, very difficult for the Taliban to protect them.
并且如果对于这两件事我仍然错了, 如果他们甚至夺回了政权, 并且请回了基地组织, 基地组织会显著提高 对美国 或者欧洲的伤害能力 这也是不可能的。 因为现在已经不是90年代了。 如果阿富汗 在Ghazni附近建立基地的话, 我们会狠狠地打击他们, 并且对于塔利班来说 去保护他们是很困难的。
Furthermore, it's simply not true that what went wrong in Afghanistan is the light footprint. In my experience, in fact, the light footprint was extremely helpful. And these troops that we brought in -- it's a great picture of David Beckham there on the sub-machine gun -- made the situation worse, not better. When I walked across Afghanistan in the winter of 2001-2002, what I saw was scenes like this. A girl, if you're lucky, in the corner of a dark room -- lucky to be able to look at the Koran. But in those early days when we're told we didn't have enough troops and enough resources, we made a lot of progress in Afghanistan. Within a few months, there were two and a half million more girls in school. In Sangin where I was sick in 2002, the nearest health clinic was within three days walk. Today, there are 14 health clinics in that area alone. There was amazing improvements. We went from almost no Afghans having mobile telephones during the Taliban to a situation where, almost overnight, three million Afghans had mobile telephones. And we had progress in the free media. We had progress in elections -- all of this with the so-called light footprint.
此外, 在阿富汗的失误 是缺少充分的理由,这根本就不是真的。 根据我的经验,事实上, 这缺少充分的理由是非常有帮助的。 并且我们带去的这些更多的军队-- 这是一张贝克汉姆 和轻机枪的图片-- 让这个情况更糟,并不是更好。 当我在2001-2002冬天 走访阿富汗时, 我看到的画面是这个。 一个女孩,如果你幸运的话, 在一个黑暗房间的角落-- 幸运的可以看到古兰经。 但是在当我们说 我们没有足够的军队与资源时, 我们在阿富汗却取得了很多进展。 在几个月之内, 有多于250万的女孩进入了学校。 2002年当我在Sangin生病时, 最近的诊所 是在3天的步行路程内。 而今天,仅仅在那个区域 就有14家诊所。 这是不可思议的发展。 在塔利班执政期间,从阿富汗几乎没有人 拥有手机 转眼间到现在, 3百万的阿富汗人拥有手机。 并且我们在媒体自由方面取得了进步。 我们在选举上取得了进步-- 所有的这些都是与所谓的“缺少充分的理由”联系在一起的。
But when we began to bring more money, when we began to invest more resources, things got worse, not better. How? Well first see, if you put 125 billion dollars a year into a country like Afghanistan where the entire revenue of the Afghan state is one billion dollars a year, you drown everything. It's not simply corruption and waste that you create; you essentially replace the priorities of the Afghan government, the elected Afghan government, with the micromanaging tendencies of foreigners on short tours with their own priorities. And the same is true for the troops.
但是当我们开始带来更多的钱, 当我们开始投资更多的资源, 事情反而变得更糟,而不是更好。这是怎么了? 好,我们来看, 如果我们把每年1250亿美金 投入一个像阿富汗这样的国家 一个总收入 每年只有10亿美金的国家, 你就毁坏了所有的事情。 这不仅仅是你创造了 腐败与浪费; 你本质上取代了阿富汗政府的优先权, 当选的阿富汗政府 以及外国短途旅行团的 微观管理倾向 以及他们的优先权。 并且这同样适用于军队。
When I walked across Afghanistan, I stayed with people like this. This is Commandant Haji Malem Mohsin Khan of Kamenj. Commandant Haji Malem Mohsin Khan of Kamenj was a great host. He was very generous, like many of the Afghans I stayed with. But he was also considerably more conservative, considerably more anti-foreign, considerably more Islamist than we'd like to acknowledge. This man, for example, Mullah Mustafa, tried to shoot me. And the reason I'm looking a little bit perplexed in this photograph is I was somewhat frightened, and I was too afraid on this occasion to ask him, having run for an hour through the desert and taken refuge in this house, why he had turned up and wanted to have his photograph taken with me. But 18 months later, I asked him why he had tried to shoot me. And Mullah Mustafa -- he's the man with the pen and paper -- explained that the man sitting immediately to the left as you look at the photograph, Nadir Shah had bet him that he couldn't hit me. Now this is not to say Afghanistan is a place full of people like Mullah Mustafa. It's not; it's a wonderful place full of incredible energy and intelligence. But it is a place where the putting-in of the troops has increased the violence rather than decreased it.
当我走访阿富汗时, 我与这些人呆在一起。 这是卡门吉的Haji Malem Mohsin Khan司令官。 他是一个很好的主人。 他非常的慷慨大方 就如同很多与我一起呆过的阿富汗人一样。 但是他也是相当的保守, 相当的不喜欢外国人 相当的伊斯兰化 比我们所了解到的还要多。 举例来说,这个男人,Mullah Mustafa 曾尝试杀了我。 并且在这张照片中我看起来比较困惑的原因是 我有一点害怕 而且我非常的恐惧在这样的场合下 去问他,在沙漠中行进了一小时 然后庇护在这个房子里, 为什么他转变了并且想与我照一张相。 但在18个月后,我问他 为什么他尝试着要杀我。 然后Mullah Mustafa--他是那个拿着纸和笔的男人-- 解释到如这幅图中大家看到的坐在他左边的那个男人, Nadir Shah 跟他打赌他不能打我。 我这儿并不是想说 阿富汗是一个到处都有像Mullah Mustafa这种人的地方。 它不是;它是一个充满 不可思议的能量与智慧的地方。 但是这个 投入军队的地方 反而增加了暴力,而不是减少。
2005, Anthony Fitzherbert, an agricultural engineer, could travel through Helmand, could stay in Nad Ali, Sangin and Ghoresh, which are now the names of villages where fighting is taking place. Today, he could never do that. So the idea that we deployed the troops to respond to the Taliban insurgency is mistaken. Rather than preceding the insurgency, the Taliban followed the troop deployment, and as far as I'm concerned, the troop deployment caused their return.
2005年,Anthony Fitzherbert 一个农业工程师, 可以经过赫尔曼德省, 可以呆在Nad Ali, Sangin和Ghoresh, 这些都是战斗发生时村庄的名字。 今天,他再也不能这样做了。 所以展开军事行动 去回应塔利班叛乱的想法 是错误的。 而不是开始叛乱, 塔利班反而开始军队部署。 并且就我而言, 军队部署反而造成了他们的返回。
Now is this a new idea? No, there have been any number of people saying this over the last seven years. I ran a center at Harvard from 2008 to 2010, and there were people like Michael Semple there who speak Afghan languages fluently, who've traveled to almost every district in the country. Andrew Wilder, for example, born on the Pakistan-Iranian border, served his whole life in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Paul Fishstein who began working there in 1978 -- worked for Save the Children, ran the Afghan research and evaluation unit. These are people who were able to say consistently that the increase in development aid was making Afghanistan less secure, not more secure -- that the counter-insurgency strategy was not working and would not work. And yet, nobody listened to them. Instead, there was a litany of astonishing optimism.
所以这是不是一个新的主意? 不,在过去的7年当中 有无数人说过这样的话。 在2008到2010年 我在哈佛大学运营一个中心 并且它有像Michael Semple 可以流利的说阿富汗语, 几乎去过这国家里每一个角落的人。 再举例,Andrew Wilder, 在巴基斯坦和伊朗的边界上出生, 有生之年 都呆在了巴基斯坦和阿富汗。 Paul Fishstein,他1978年开始 为救助儿童在那儿工作, 他负责阿富汗研究和评估单位。 这些人, 他们都会始终如一地说 那些增加的援助 只让阿富汗变得安全性较差,更加不安全-- 那个反叛乱策略 并没有奏效并且不会奏效。 但是,没有人听他们的。 取而代之的是, 却有无数惊人的乐观面。
Beginning in 2004, every general came in saying, "I've inherited a dismal situation, but finally I have the right resources and the correct strategy, which will deliver," in General Barno's word in 2004, the "decisive year." Well guess what? It didn't. But it wasn't sufficient to prevent General Abuzaid saying that he had the strategy and the resources to deliver, in 2005, the "decisive year." Or General David Richards to come in 2006 and say he had the strategy and the resources to deliver the "crunch year." Or in 2007, the Norwegian deputy foreign minister, Espen Eide, to say that that would deliver the "decisive year." Or in 2008, Major General Champoux to come in and say he would deliver the "decisive year." Or in 2009, my great friend, General Stanley McChrystal, who said that he was "knee-deep in the decisive year." Or in 2010, the U.K. foreign secretary, David Miliband, who said that at last we would deliver the "decisive year." And you'll be delighted to hear in 2011, today, that Guido Westerwelle, the German foreign minister, assures us that we are in the "decisive year."
从2004年开始, 每一个将军都说, “我继承了一个惨淡的现状, 但是最终我会有正确的资源与策略 交付给大家。” 2004年,巴诺将军说道 这是“决定性的一年”。 猜猜看?它并不是决定性的。 但是这并不能足以防止Abuzaid将军在2005年说 他拥有策略和资源 给大家一个交付。 这是“决定性的一年”。 或看看在2006年大卫·理查兹将军 说道他有策略和资源 去交付给大家“粉碎(塔利班)之年”。 再看在2007年, 挪威外交部副部长,Espen Eide 说道这会是“决定性的一年”。 2008年,少将Champoux 说道他会给大家一个“决定性的一年”。 2009年,我的好朋友, 斯坦利·麦克里斯特尔将军, 他说道他“身陷在这决定性的一年”。 2010年, 英国的外交部长大卫·米利班德 他说道2010年会是“决定性的一年”。 并且你将会高兴地听到在2011年,现在, 德国外交部长基多·威斯特威勒 向我们保证这是“决定性的一年”。
(Applause)
(掌声)
How do we allow any of this to happen? Well the answer, of course, is, if you spend 125 billion or 130 billion dollars a year in a country, you co-opt almost everybody. Even the aid agencies, who begin to receive an enormous amount of money from the U.S. and the European governments to build schools and clinics, are somewhat disinclined to challenge the idea that Afghanistan is an existential threat to global security. They're worried, in other words, that if anybody believes that it wasn't such a threat -- Oxfam, Save the Children wouldn't get the money to build their hospitals and schools. It's also very difficult to confront a general with medals on his chest. It's very difficult for a politician, because you're afraid that many lives have been lost in vain. You feel deep, deep guilt. You exaggerate your fears, and you're terrified about the humiliation of defeat.
我们是 怎么允许这些事情发生的? 当然,答案是 如果你花费每年1250亿或1300亿 美金在一个国家上, 你会串通几乎每个人, 甚至救援部门-- 它们开始收到从美国和欧洲政府 过来的大量的资金 去建设学校和诊所-- 它们有点不愿意服从 去挑战这种 阿富汗是国际安全 生死存亡的威胁的看法。 换句话说,它们很担心, 如果每个人都相信阿富汗不是一个威胁-- 牛津饥荒救济委员会,一个救助孩子的机构- 将不会拿到资金 去建造他们的医院和学校。 而且去面对一个胸前挂有勋章的将军时, 这是非常困难的。 对于政客来说这是很困难的, 因为你害怕许多人丧失了生命是徒劳的。 你有种深深,深深的罪恶感。 你夸大你的恐惧 并且你惧怕失败 给你带来的羞耻。
What is the solution to this? Well the solution to this is we need to find a way that people like Michael Semple, or those other people, who are telling the truth, who know the country, who've spent 30 years on the ground -- and most importantly of all, the missing component of this -- Afghans themselves, who understand what is going on. We need to somehow get their message to the policymakers. And this is very difficult to do because of our structures.
那么什么是解决这些的方案呢? 解决的方法是 我们需要找到一种方法 让像Michael Semple这样的人,和更多的 说实话,了解这个国家, 在这儿土地上呆了30多年的人 而且最重要的是 这是被遗漏的一部分-- 让阿富汗他们自己人, 他们最知道什么才是出路。 我们需要以某种方法得到他们的想法 并告诉政策的制定者。 这是非常困难去做到的 因为我们的政府结构。
The first thing we need to change is the structures of our government. Very, very sadly, our foreign services, the United Nations, the military in these countries have very little idea of what's going on. The average British soldier is on a tour of only six months; Italian soldiers, on tours of four months; the American military, on tours of 12 months. Diplomats are locked in embassy compounds. When they go out, they travel in these curious armored vehicles with these somewhat threatening security teams who ready 24 hours in advance who say you can only stay on the ground for an hour.
我们需要改变的第一件事 就是我们政府的结构。 非常非常可悲的是, 我们的外交服务,联合国, 在国外的军队 他们都不知道发生了什么。 一个普通的英国士兵的服役只有六个月; 意大利士兵服役4个月; 美国士兵服役12个月。 外交官被困在与大使馆的和解当中。 当他们出来时,他们坐在这些奇怪的装甲车当中 与在24小时前就准备好 告知你只能在周边待上一小时 的这些有点让人感到恐吓的安全部队随行在一起。
In the British embassy in Afghanistan in 2008, an embassy of 350 people, there were only three people who could speak Dari, the main language of Afghanistan, at a decent level. And there was not a single Pashto speaker. In the Afghan section in London responsible for governing Afghan policy on the ground, I was told last year that there was not a single staff member of the foreign office in that section who had ever served on a posting in Afghanistan. So we need to change that institutional culture. And I could make the same points about the United States and the United Nations.
英国驻阿富汗大使馆 在2008年, 350人的大使馆 只有3个人可以像样的说达利语, 而达利语是阿富汗的主要语言。 而且没有一个说普什图语的人。 在伦敦的对阿富汗机构 它们是负责控制在阿富汗地面政策的, 去年有人告诉我 那个对外机构 没有一个人 曾经在 阿富汗服役过。 所以我们需要改变这种制度文化。 同时我可以对美国 和联合国提出相同的观点。
Secondly, we need to aim off of the optimism of the generals. We need to make sure that we're a little bit suspicious, that we understand that optimism is in the DNA of the military, that we don't respond to it with quite as much alacrity. And thirdly, we need to have some humility. We need to begin from the position that our knowledge, our power, our legitimacy is limited. This doesn't mean that intervention around the world is a disaster. It isn't.
其次,我们需要将目标瞄准在那些将军身上的乐观面。 我们需要确定我们要有多疑的态度, 我们理解乐观 是随军队的DNA而来的, 但我们不 那样乐观地回应他们。 第三,我们需要有谦卑之心。 我们需要从 我们的知识,权利, 我们的合法性 是有限制的位置开始思考。 这并不表示 世界各地的干预是一场灾难。 它并不是。
Bosnia and Kosovo were signal successes, great successes. Today when you go to Bosnia it is almost impossible to believe that what we saw in the early 1990s happened. It's almost impossible to believe the progress we've made since 1994. Refugee return, which the United Nations High Commission for Refugees thought would be extremely unlikely, has largely happened. A million properties have been returned. Borders between the Bosniak territory and the Bosnian-Serb territory have calmed down. The national army has shrunk. The crime rates in Bosnia today are lower than they are in Sweden.
波斯尼亚和科索沃 它们是显著的成功, 极大的成功。 今天,当你去波斯尼亚 你将几乎不可能相信 你在1990年代所看到的一切。 你几乎不可能相信我们从 1994年所取得了的进展。 难民返回, 联合国难民高级委员会 认为这是不可能 但这已经在很大程度上发生了。 一百万财产被退还。 在波斯尼亚人领地和 波斯尼亚-塞尔维亚人领地的边界平静了下来。 国家军队已经缩小。 现波斯尼亚的犯罪率 已经比瑞典的还要低。
This has been done by an incredible, principled effort by the international community, and, of course, above all, by Bosnians themselves. But you need to look at context. And this is what we've lost in Afghanistan and Iraq. You need to understand that in those places what really mattered was, firstly, the role of Tudman and Milosevic in coming to the agreement, and then the fact those men went, that the regional situation improved, that the European Union could offer Bosnia something extraordinary: the chance to be part of a new thing, a new club, a chance to join something bigger.
这些成就都是 通过令人难以置信的、原则性的努力 通过国际社会的帮助, 当然,最重要的是 通过波斯尼亚人自己创造的。 但是你需要看看周围的环境。 这些都是我们在阿富汗和伊拉克已经失去的。 我们需要去理解在这些地方 什么是真正重要的 首先Tudman和米洛舍维奇 达成了协议, 然后事实上,那些军队撤了, 地区形势改善, 欧盟可以给波斯尼亚提供 一些不同寻常的东西: 一个机会去成为 一个新事物,新团体的一部分, 一个机会去加入一些更大的事情。
And finally, we need to understand that in Bosnia and Kosovo, a lot of the secret of what we did, a lot of the secret of our success, was our humility -- was the tentative nature of our engagement. We criticized people a lot in Bosnia for being quite slow to take on war criminals. We criticized them for being quite slow to return refugees. But that slowness, that caution, the fact that President Clinton initially said that American troops would only be deployed for a year, turned out to be a strength, and it helped us to put our priorities right.
最终,我们需要明白在波斯尼亚和科索沃, 我们所做的秘密 我们成功的秘密, 是我们的谦卑之心-- 是我们与生俱来的承诺。 我们因为相当缓慢地处理战犯的事 而批评在波斯尼亚的人们。 我们因为太缓慢地返回难民的事 也批评他们。 但是这种缓慢,这种谨慎, 事实上如同克林顿总统一开始说过 美国军队只会在那里部署一年, 这都转化为一种力量, 它帮助我们纠正我们的优先权利。
One of the saddest things about our involvement in Afghanistan is that we've got our priorities out of sync. We're not matching our resources to our priorities. Because if what we're interested in is terrorism, Pakistan is far more important than Afghanistan. If what we're interested in is regional stability, Egypt is far more important. If what we're worried about is poverty and development, sub-Saharan Africa is far more important. This doesn't mean that Afghanistan doesn't matter, but that it's one of 40 countries in the world with which we need to engage.
关于我们参与阿富汗事件 最让人难过的事情之一 就是我们把我们的优先权脱离了正规。 我们不匹配我们的资源和我们的优先权。 因为如果我们感兴趣的是恐怖主义, 巴基斯坦比阿富汗要重要的多。 如果我们感兴趣的是地区稳定, 埃及要重要的多。 如果我们都很担心是贫困和发展, 撒哈拉以南的非洲要重要的多。 这并不是说阿富汗不重要, 但它只是世界上40个 需要我们帮助的国家之一、
So if I can finish with a metaphor for intervention, what we need to think of is something like mountain rescue. Why mountain rescue? Because when people talk about intervention, they imagine that some scientific theory -- the Rand Corporation goes around counting 43 previous insurgencies producing mathematical formula saying you need one trained counter-insurgent for every 20 members of the population. This is the wrong way of looking at it. You need to look at it in the way that you look at mountain rescue.
所以如果我们可以以一个关于干预的隐喻作为结尾, 我们需要思考地是 有点像山峰紧急救援。 为什么是山峰紧急救援呢? 因为当人们谈干预时, 他们认为一些科学的理论依据-- 围绕着兰德集团 计算43个已有的叛乱 造出数学公式 说你需要对每20个人口的成员 配有一个训练有素的反叛乱的战士。 这是一个错误的方法去看干预。 你需要用你看山地紧急救援的眼光去看它。
When you're doing mountain rescue, you don't take a doctorate in mountain rescue, you look for somebody who knows the terrain. It's about context. You understand that you can prepare, but the amount of preparation you can do is limited -- you can take some water, you can have a map, you can have a pack. But what really matters is two kinds of problems -- problems that occur on the mountain which you couldn't anticipate, such as, for example, ice on a slope, but which you can get around, and problems which you couldn't anticipate and which you can't get around, like a sudden blizzard or an avalanche or a change in the weather.
当你在山地紧急救援时, 你不会带一个博士生同行, 而是寻找一个知道地形的人。 这是关于环境的。 你知道你是可以做提前准备的, 但你所能做的准备 却是有限的。 你可以带上水,一个地图, 你可以有一个背包。 但是真正重要的是 两种问题-- 一种在上山时 你不能预料到的问题, 例如,坡上的冰, 但你可以绕过去, 还有一种问题是你没能预料到 并且你不可以绕过去的问题, 就像突然暴雪或雪崩 或天气突变。
And the key to this is a guide who has been on that mountain, in every temperature, at every period -- a guide who, above all, knows when to turn back, who doesn't press on relentlessly when conditions turn against them. What we look for in firemen, in climbers, in policemen, and what we should look for in intervention, is intelligent risk takers -- not people who plunge blind off a cliff, not people who jump into a burning room, but who weigh their risks, weigh their responsibilities. Because the worst thing we have done in Afghanistan is this idea that failure is not an option. It makes failure invisible, inconceivable and inevitable. And if we can resist this crazy slogan, we shall discover -- in Egypt, in Syria, in Libya, and anywhere else we go in the world -- that if we can often do much less than we pretend, we can do much more than we fear.
这种问题的解决方法是 一个在任何温度 任何时间 都来过这个山的向导-- 一个首先 知道当条件不利时 何时该回头, 不屈不饶的向导。 我们在 救火员,登山者,警察当中寻找, 关于介入干预,我们需要寻找的 是聪明的甘于冒险的人-- 不是盲目地深陷于悬崖的人, 不是一头跳进熊熊大火房间里的人, 而是权衡风险, 权衡责任的人。 因为我们在阿富汗做过的最糟的事情 就是这个想法: 失败不是一个选项。 这让失败成为了隐形的, 不可思议的且不可避免的。 并且如果我们可以 抵抗这些疯狂的标语, 我们就会发现-- 在埃及,在叙利亚,在利比亚, 和世界上任何一个地方-- 如果我们可以经常做的比我们假装的要少, 我们就可以做的比我们所恐惧的要多。
Thank you very much.
谢谢。
(Applause)
(掌声)
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
谢谢。非常感谢。 谢谢。非常感谢。 谢谢。谢谢 谢谢
(Applause)
(掌声)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
谢谢 谢谢。谢谢 谢谢
(Applause)
(掌声)
Bruno Giussani: Rory, you mentioned Libya at the end. Just briefly, what's your take on the current events there and the intervention?
布鲁诺·朱萨尼:罗里,你在演讲的最后提到了利比亚。 请大致地讲一下,你对当前在那里发生的事件 和干预的看法?
Rory Stewart: Okay, I think Libya poses the classic problem. The problem in Libya is that we are always pushing for the black or white. We imagine there are only two choices: either full engagement and troop deployment or total isolation. And we are always being tempted up to our neck. We put our toes in and we go up to our neck. What we should have done in Libya is we should have stuck to the U.N. resolution. We should have limited ourselves very, very strictly to the protection of the civilian population in Benghazi. We could have done that. We set up a no-fly zone within 48 hours because Gaddafi had no planes within 48 hours. Instead of which, we've allowed ourselves to be tempted towards regime change. In doing so, we've destroyed our credibility with the Security Council, which means it's very difficult to get a resolution on Syria, and we're setting ourselves up again for failure. Once more, humility, limits, honesty, realistic expectations and we could have achieved something to be proud of.
罗里·斯图尔特:好的,我认为利比亚显示了一个很传统的问题。 在利比亚的问题 是我们总是争取不是黑就是白。 我们想象一下只有两种选择: 要不全部投入和部署军队 要不就完全孤立起来。 但是无论我们如何选择。 我们都无法得到最好的结果。 我们在利比亚应当做的是 我们应该坚持联合国的决议。 我们应该非常、非常的严格限制我们自己 去保护在班加西的平民。 我们应该这样做。 我们在48小时之内建立了禁飞区 因为卡扎菲Gaddafi在48小时之内 没有飞机。 相反的,我们允许我们自己受到 对政权变更的诱惑。 在这样做时,我们已经摧毁了我们与联合国安理会的信誉 这也说明这是非常困难 去找到一个叙利亚的解决方案, 并且我们让自己又一次失败了。 再一次,谦卑, 极限,诚实, 切实的期望 以及我们可以做到值得骄傲的事。
BG: Rory, thank you very much.
BG:罗里,非常感谢。
RS: Thank you. (BG: Thank you.)
RS:谢谢!(BG:谢谢)