Awaiting its return

You'll have seen this before, but given the ongoing 'surge' (I would prefer not to put into print what that word suggests to me) and the alternative course of action recommended by the Baker Study Group, I think it is salutary to remember how some of those on the other side interpret events; whether rightly or wrongly is yet to be seen.

After a little resistance [in Somalia], The American troops left after achieving nothing. They left after claiming that they were the largest power on earth. They left after some resistance from powerless, poor, unarmed people whose only weapon is the belief in Allah The Almighty, and who do not fear the fabricated American media lies. We learned from those who fought there, that they were surprised to see the low spiritual morale of the American fighters in comparison with the experience they had with the Russian fighters. The Americans ran away from those fighters who fought and killed them, while the latter were still there. If the U.S. still thinks and brags that it still has this kind of power even after all these successive defeats in Vietnam, Beirut, Aden, and Somalia, then let them go back to those who are awaiting its return.
Osama Bin Laden - Interview with Peter Arnett , late March, 1997

Note the date.

I found it here in Scott Malensek's reflections on the consequences of retreat.