Obama marks end of Iraq war

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by August

Not many because we're drawing down there as well. We'd probably have left already but Obama doesn't want the Karzai regime to crumble like a house of cards before he runs for reelection. So like Nixon did 40 years earlier in Vietnam he's deliberately keeping them there long enough so he's not trying to run against pictures like this:

Yeah, it is a bit like that.

Reminds me of a quote from one of the many times we got tangled up in Afghanistan:

"[It was] a war begun for no wise purpose, carried on with a strange mixture of rashness and timidity, brought to a close after suffering and disaster, without much glory attached either to the government which directed, or the great body of troops which waged it. Not one benefit, political or military, was acquired with this war. Our eventual evacuation of the country resembled the retreat of an army defeated."