Conventional wisdom holds that setting a timetable for getting American troops out of Iraq would be a mistake.
Very few conflicts in the history of the world have been satisfactorily concluded according to a published timetable because you lose all flexibility in dealing with your opponents.
If I had been under ObamaCare and a beaurocrat had been trying to tell me when I could get that CT scan that would have delayed my treatment. I was able to get the treatment as fast as I could based upon my timetable and not the government's timetable. That's what saved my life.