No Answers, No Goals, No Exit

Your headline, "No answers, no goals, no exit." summed up the tragedy of the past six years. Without tough measurable goals it will be impossible to make progress in Iraq.

Both common sense and thirty years of tough minded social science research tells us that people do better when they are striving to attain clear goals and they do even better when they try to attain difficult, but reachable clear goals.

Without goals, we will continue to wander in the deserts of Iraq with no idea about what we are supposed to be doing and without knowing whether or not we have attained success.

Unless we can articulate clearly what a desired end state is, we should withdraw from Iraq now and not continue this escalating commitment to what appears to be a losing course of action.

Sent to Boston Globe