Withdrawing from either war enitrely would be disastrous. This is not a war of the old world, the rules have changed. You don't win by killing your enemy you win by gaining the trust of the people. In Iraq the situation is not as good as it was once portrayed but I'm confident the Iraqi state will survive. They have a growing army and police force, a lot of money for the government to invest in nation building, and a people who are tired of the relentless attacks by extremists. We are pulling out of Iraq, but it's not a full withdrawal, we still will maintain about 60,000 contingency troops there who will do nothing but train the iraqi military and police, and I assume step in if things get extremely out of hand (which I doubt they will.) Once America stops fighting actively in Iraq the extremists will be attacking only other Iraqis, that will hurt their image with the people. They can no longer claim they're fighting the imperialist oppressors but will be seen as fighting the government who doing all it can to stabilize the nation. As long as corruption doesn't proliferate it's way through the Iraqi government we don't have a lot to fear in that situation.
Afghanistan is much worse, people think that's reason we should pull out, I think it's the reason that we should stay for another 20-30 years. You must think I'm crazy for saying that but the region has never had a solid stable government put in place. If we achieve that goal then together Iraq and Afghanistan will help go towards changing the landscape of the whole middleeast. Terrorist forces would be forced to take shelter in either yemen or pakistan were they might thrive for a while (one has to admit to oneself that the terrorist forces are an elusive group who are able to survive through some very tough situations) but Yemen would not tolerate them for very long, they keep an image of friendliness with the US but allow terrorists into their nation because of the fact that they don't have the governmental power to control them. But Yemen does not want to become the next Iraq and would likely ask for US aid in capturing terrorists (in fact I remember reading that they already have been cracking down with the aid of the US) which would leave pakistan as the terrorist holding pariah of the world, disliked by india, uncooperative with the United states, and festering with radical violence they will either fall into a dark age or accept US assistance. Or we could just pull out now and let the whole area go to shit and call it another vietnam. Either way Afghanistan is a big sloppy mess that we all just wish never existed.
