Like it or not, this is the description of a police action, not war.
Warriors should NOT be in any country fighting a police action. We should fight wars, not engage in police actions.
If we want to send Marines and Army soldiers overseas to engage in politically correct police actions, then we should form a new branch of the military and train heavily armed policemen for that task. It is nuts to have Marines in a place like this doing police action--this is NOT what they were trained for.
The point of training the Iraqis is to get them to take over policing the country
What do you think the post-war occupations of Germany and Japan consisted of? They were nothing but "police actions", too. And the military seems to have handled those situations rather well.
Post-war occupations: isn't that why every branch has a Civil Affairs unit?
"Like it or not, this is the description of a police action, not war.
Warriors should NOT be in any country fighting a police action. We should fight wars, not engage in police actions."
Hard to see what you are advocating should have been the course of action in this case?
* Invade country, blow up some stuff, depose government, cut'n'run?
* Invade country, place under military occupation government, take no steps to return any form of sovereignty, have large numbers of troops carrying on periodically blowing stuff up for forseeable future?
* Not invade in the first place?
Most modern armed conflicts have been what would be described as Police Actions rather than of a major war.
Most of the Colonial Wars of the 18/19th century fell under that heading.