Politics & Power Quote by John Abizaid

The line performs a familiar wartime two-step: promise departure while building an escape hatch big enough to drive an armored division through. “Certainly our goal is to leave Iraq” is the comforting headline, the kind of sentence meant for domestic ears tired of open-ended conflict. But the second clause quietly grabs the steering wheel: “but we can’t leave... until we know...” That “until” doesn’t name a date, a benchmark, or even who gets to decide what counts as “capable and efficient enough.” It turns withdrawal into an evaluative mood rather than a policy, a commitment conditioned on a confidence level that can always be postponed.

Abizaid’s phrasing also shifts moral and strategic responsibility onto the Iraqis in a way that sounds respectful (“sovereignty of the nation”) while preserving U.S. discretion. The implied message: we’re not occupying, we’re mentoring; we’re not staying, we’re ensuring stability. It’s the rhetoric of the “handover,” where continued presence is framed as reluctant stewardship rather than power.

Context matters: Abizaid, a senior U.S. commander during the Iraq War, is speaking from inside a counterinsurgency and state-building project that required time, training, and political buy-in the U.S. could influence but not control. The sentence is calibrated to defend a strategy under pressure: it reassures skeptics of an exit while warning that leaving “too soon” risks collapse. It’s a soldier’s language of conditionality, with politics smuggled in under the banner of readiness.