Editorial: Many horizons shape debate on Iraq

In the past week, the call for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq by the year 2010 has grown louder.

That, in big part, is due to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s tour of the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as his stops in Jordan, Israel and European capitals later this week.

Obama believes in a 16-month U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and a reinforcement of the force that is fighting the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan.

With Obama in their nation, the Iraqis also said they welcomed an American withdrawal by the year 2010, which would be the second year a new U.S. president would be in office.

But that would depend on who is in the Oval Office. Republican presidential candidate John McCain has made it clear he wants Iraq stabilized for the long term, believing it will take more than 16 months into a new presidency to complete such a task.

That is an issue where McCain and Obama differ. And it’s a question that divides the American public.

The question of any withdrawal is if the Iraqis are ready to take over security of their own nation. They have received the lead security role in several provinces, and they are expected to continue to be able to do so.

And the political situation in Iraq seems to be progressing slightly, though the government still must show that it can provide services to the people without the continued support of the American military and diplomats.

For its part, Britain, which has the second largest number of troops in Iraq, is already looking at withdrawing its troops next year if the security conditions are right, according to that nation’s prime minister, Gordon Brown.

While Obama and McCain debate these points and tell what they would like to do, President Bush remains in control of the situation on the ground and continues to stay his course in Iraq, which includes having about 140,000 U.S. troops there. But last week, the Bush administration said that Iraq and the U.S. had reached a general “horizon” for when a larger reduction in U.S. forces may occur. That announcement comes on the heels of negotiations between the U.S. and Iraq over a long-term plan for the future of U.S. activity in Iraq, something Bush seems keen to complete before he leaves office in January.

What the “horizon” is that the Bush administration refers to has not been released and remains unclear.

The next report by Gen. David Petraeus, former overall commander in Iraq and the new head of the Central Command, which oversees the operations in Iraq, is due in September, and from that the political landscape will have yet another view on whether or not the military minds believe a troop withdrawal is a possibility.

That, we believe, will have an impact on Bush’s decisions in his final months, leaving Obama and McCain to continue their debate before the American people.

This editorial appeared Thursday in the Sierra Vista Herald, a sister newspaper of the Green Valley News with Wick Communications Co. The commentary also reflects the viewpoint of this newspaper.