War Or A Means To An End?

To many people in America, the deciding factor of the elections is the candidate's views and policies on the war in Iraq. The democratic candidates say they will progressively remove troops back to the States, but how do they plan to do this? There is no possible, reasonable way to extract all the troops from Iraq. The United States has never totally withdrew from an occupied land except for Vietnam. We still techniquely are at war with Korea and troops are still stationed there. One of my friends is stationed in Japan and I've had family and friends in and out of Afghanistan and Iraq. In my opinion, the people saying we don't belong in Iraq are the one's who close their eyes to the progress being made over there. All the people I know who've been there, say they are supportive of the effort and it's a cause worth fighting for.
Some people claim we need to withdraw before more lives are lost. Okay, I agree, I dont' want to see anymore lives lost, but who's to say by fighting now we're not saving more lives in the future. Now let's take a step back in history to World War I. During one battle in World War I, the Germans suffered four-hundred thousand plus casualities, while the French suffered about five-hundred thousand casualities. Now compare that to how many lives have been lost in this entire war to that one battle in World War I. I, therefore, say to all of you anti-war participants, complain all you want, because you are not going to get your own way. The only reason you believe we can get out of this war now is because you don't look at the ramifications, or maybe you forget what America was built on and you want to see it pushed around by countries who have no business pushing us around.