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It seems to me that we’ve stayed here, developing this place as long as we have out of some kind of moral obligation to the people of the country. If we were going after AQI, we wouldn’t be spending so much time developing infrastructure, we’d have put that on the civilian gov’t. We do a lot of their work for them.

“We do a lot of their work for them.”

Yes, and that must be very hard for GI’s to take. It has become (or perhaps from the git) reminiscent of post Gulf War I Kuwait. I share your indignance if I have perceived it correctly.......I also resented the ARVN shamming in the background so much 40 yrs ago......

It seems to me that we’ve stayed here, developing this place as long as we have out of some kind of moral obligation to the people of the country.

Well, like I said, if I really thought this were our reason for maintaining a postwar military presence in Iraq, I would never have supported doing so in the first place.

I support doing so because I believe it's in our national interest. And it's in our national interest whether or not Iraq's government is good or awful in our opinion. That's why, to someone who is actually focused on our national interest, to say "he better accept our metrics or we're gonna pack up and leave!" just makes no sense. It's like saying to someone who owes you money, "pay me on my schedule or I'm gonna burn all the money in my own wallet!"

If we were going after AQI, we wouldn’t be spending so much time developing infrastructure, we’d have put that on the civilian gov’t.

Well, unless we deemed the civilian gov't incapable of doing so (which it seems to be), and unless we believed that building up Iraq's infrastructure was important to help prevent the conditions that allow AQ to gain a foothold (which is indeed what I believe).

Again: We have independent reasons of our own for wanting a presence there and doing those things, reasons having to do with our national interest. Saying "do XYZ or we're gonna leave, we swear!" demonstrates confusion about why we are there in the first place. We want a military presence there, we're not there out of some kind of weird charity. Again: if this isn't true, then we should get the hell out of there yesterday.