From a young age, we set goals. Whether it is to ride a bike or climb Mount Everest, we all have something we would like to accomplish. Sometimes to reach our goals, we need to set several smaller achievements between the starting point and where we would like to end up.
On Wednesday, Senate Democrats proposed plans and deadlines for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. Of the plans, two gained momentum and support from the party, causing a deep split in its views on the war.
Senators John Kerry, D-Mass., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis., proposed that troops be completely withdrawn by July 1, 2007.
In contrast, senators Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Jack Reed, D-R.I., didn't set a date for complete withdrawal, but proposed troops begin leaving Iraq this year.
Politics aside, as time has gone by, the desire to end the war in Iraq has become stronger. According to The Washington Post, recent polls show only 33 percent of Americans believe that the United States is making good progress in Iraq.
Here, the key word is "progress." In order to measure our progress and be able to establish whether or not we are succeeding, we must set concrete goals. Setting one date for the withdrawal of U.S. troops is very appealing, but without interim goals, there will be no way to gauge our progress. It is unrealistic to predict a single date on which every loose end can be neatly tied up.
On the other hand, the bill proposing the gradual removal of U.S. troops beginning this year needs more specific criteria. It doesn't detail the number of troops to remove, not even a percentage or any other concrete detail.
Although the idea of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq is appealing to many Americans, the potential for failure, both for this country and Iraq, is too great to overlook.
If the United States withdraws all troops within a year, like the proposed bill suggests, where would that leave Iraq? With a pseudo-functioning government and significant dependency on the United States, it seems plausible that the nation could fail socially and economically.
The ideal answer to conceptualizing an end to the war in Iraq is to establish a consistent line of goals, rather than one date, for a complete removal of troops.
It's established that the American public would welcome the removal of U.S. troops from Iraq. What's not established is how to get to there.
