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[Excerpted from The New York Times editorial of published July 7,
2008]
The alarming resurgence of al-Qaeda and the
Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan makes it even more imperative
for the United States to begin planning for a swift and orderly
withdrawal from Iraq.
For far too long President Bush’s disastrous
war of choice in Iraq has leached resources and top-level attention
from the war of necessity in Afghanistan. A grim new statistic
underscores just how badly things are going there: 46 American and
allied forces died in Afghanistan in June, more than during any
other month since the war began in 2001. And for the second straight
month, combat deaths in Afghanistan exceeded those for American-led
forces in Iraq, where 31 troops died.
The recent decline in violence in Iraq is very
welcome, but it has yet to be matched with essential political
reforms. Instead of planning for a serious drawdown of American
troops, the White House is using its self-proclaimed success as one
more excuse for staying on. Mr. Bush’s successor will almost
certainly inherit an Iraq with at least 130,000 American troops
still fighting there.
What is needed is a far more serious, public
discussion by the two candidates about how they plan to meet their
commitments and also ensure that Iraq’s chaos does not spin
further out of control or spread even further over its borders.
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