Commentary: Doomed to repeat history in Afghanistan?

Joseph L. Galloway
McClatchy Newspapers

President Barack Obama this week is laying out the road home from the war in Iraq during the next 19 months. More or less.

The President has indicated that he'll order the withdrawal of upward of 100,000 American troops from a war that began six years ago and has cost us more than 4,200 American dead, well over 70,000 wounded or injured and nearly a trillion dollars in national treasure.

This withdrawal, however, will leave tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq to train and advise Iraqi security forces, safeguard American facilities and personnel and continue tracking down and eliminating the worst al Qaida in Iraq terrorists.

The president and the generals in command are operating against an Iraqi deadline of 2012 for the removal of all American troops from the country as dictated in the status of forces agreement negotiated between Washington and Baghdad late last year.

It's time — past time — to begin a major drawdown of U.S. forces in a war that was begun on false pretenses with little foresight or planning and a rosy forecast of a swift victory and an even swifter withdrawal by the summer of 2003.

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