Truest statement of the week

Well, I mean, again, let's look at it concretely. Bush had promised exactly the same withdrawal pattern from Iraq: by this time, we will be out. Obama has followed it. They're not going out. What is essentially happening, they're reducing the presence of combat troops and eliminating it in the big cities, and building six huge military bases all over Iraq, in which they'll keep between fifty and sixty thousand soldiers, ready to act when the need be -- just like the British did when they occupied Iraq in the '20s and '30s of the last century. And the British were then driven out by a violent upheaval and revolution in the '50s. So the US is keeping these bases in, (a) to control Iraq, and (b) as a warning to Iran. And I think there's going to be trouble. The war isn't over at all. We've seen, just a few days ago, huge explosions in Baghdad and Fallujah. It's a total disaster and a mess. And to present that as somehow "mission accomplished part two" is a joke. That country has been wrecked, a million Iraqis dead, its social infrastructure destroyed. And in Afghanistan, they are now going from bad to worse. They know, and General Eikenberry knows and says, we cannot win this war militarily. They can't lose it, but they can't win it, either. So, political solution is the only way out, and that means that they have to have an exit strategy. Obama isn't even talking about that, because that might be construed as a sign of weakness. But by who? The army knows what's going on. They can't stay there forever.

-- Tariq Ali, Democracy Now!, September 21, 2010.