the autocrats of the oil states in the Gulf are a more appropriate audience than the people who do the dying, the voting, and the paying: The American

But under present conditions, withdrawal is not an option. American forces are indispensable. They are in Iraq not as a favour to its government or as a reward for its conduct. They are there as an expression of the American national interest to prevent the Iranian combination of imperialism and fundamentalist ideology from dominating a region on which the energy supplies of the industrial democracies depend.
Henry Kissinger