Sen. Barack Obama: “Bill, what I’ve said is—I’ve already said it succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.”
Bill O’Reilly: “Right! So why can’t you just say, I was right in the beginning, and I was wrong about the surge?"
Sen. Obama: “Because there is an underlying problem with what we’ve done. We have reduced the violence…”
O’Reilly: “Yeah?”
Sen. Obama: “...but the Iraqis still haven’t taken responsibility! And we still don’t have the kind of political reconciliation. We are still spending, Bill, $10 [billion] to $12 billion a month.”
O’Reilly: “And I hope, if you’re president, you can get them to kick in and pay us back.”
Sen. Obama: “They’ve got $79 billion in New York!”
O’Reilly: “And I’ll go with you!”
Sen. Obama: “Let’s go!”
O’Reilly: “We’ll get some of that money back.”
Obama makes Iraqis sound like archetypal Reaganesque welfare queens; sucking at the teat of the American government while hoarding a giant pile of gold. Why, those ungrateful bastards! It's not like we blew up most of their country and made them rebuild their entire political system from scratch! When will they stand up and take responsibility for the mess we made of their homeland?
Of course, what Obama doesn't say is that the Iraqi public has wanted U.S. withdrawal for years now, and Obama has essentially endorsed al-Maliki's timetable. But I suppose admitting this would make it seem like Obama gave a shit what our colonial underlings thought, and that might be a sign of weakness.
Ah, the sun never sets, etc, etc.
