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http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-06-15-troops-ourview_x.htm

Setting deadline for troops' withdrawal will backfire
Updated 6/15/2006

When the public turned against the Vietnam War, many returning soldiers found themselves ignored, disdained and shunned. Iraq is different. Though most Americans now believe the war was a mistake, they still honor the troops.
That support became particularly poignant Thursday when the number of dead in Iraq reached yet another milestone: 2,500.

The grim announcement coincided with the start of a two-day debate in the House of Representatives on Iraq, which has been discussed far too little there in the three years since the United States invaded, the original plan went horribly awry, and the costs in lives and money soared.

Opposing view: 'Enough is enough'

Republican leaders capitalized on the rare good news of the past week in Iraq — the killing of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the filling of key posts in the new Iraqi government — to put forth a resolution labeling the Iraq war part of the global fight against terrorism and saying an arbitrary date for the withdrawal or redeployment of U.S. forces is not in the national interest.

At one level, the debate is a cynical display of election-year politics that turns the troops fighting in Iraq into political pawns. Because Republicans wrote the resolution to express support for the troops as well as for President Bush's policy, a "no" vote can easily be twisted into a campaign attack ad claiming that anyone opposing the war is hostile to the troops fighting it, which is absurd.

But cheap political stunts aside, the thrust of the resolution, it seems to us, has merit. Iraq has become an important part of the war on terror, even if it wasn't when the war began. It's hard to argue otherwise when the organization led by Zarqawi and his successor calls itself "al-Qaeda in Iraq" and pledges allegiance to Osama bin Laden.

And while the war itself was a mistake based on faulty intelligence and delusional optimism, pulling out now, as advocated by Rep. John Murtha and other Democrats, risks making a bad situation worse.

U.S. troops should not stay in Iraq, as in Vietnam, purely for pride in a hopeless battle. They should remain, however, as long as there is a reasonable chance that they can bring some stability, reinforce the fledgling democratic government and prevent Iraq from becoming a haven for terrorists. Announcing a timetable for withdrawal, as Sen. John Kerry proposes (Kerry's resolution in the Senate was rejected 93-6 on Thursday), would just invite the insurgents to wait out the American presence.

Thursday's fireworks on the House floor did serve to illuminate how Congress has been egregiously missing in action on sustained discussion and oversight of the Iraq war. A two-day debate hardly begins to address the many critical issues: What would success look like? Is the $320 billion allocated to the war effort being well spent? Can more be done to protect the troops from lethal roadside bombings? What is being done to engage surrounding countries? What about the training of Iraqi forces?

Careful, extended examinations of those questions would do more to honor the 2,500 U.S. military dead and 18,490 wounded than would the sensible yet politically loaded resolution poised for passage today.