I’m not the one being ridiculous. The insurgency was defeated.
Yes it was and while I think we were not violent enough in Iraq the post SOFA conditions in Iraq were all heading in the right direction until it expired in 2011. Obama, politically motivated, failed to renew an SOFA and abandoned Iraq to his ridiculous hope and change meme, the international version.
There is a reason that we have had troops in Europe, Japan and Korea all these years and the cost of doing that was much less than fighting more wars with German nuts, Japanese nuts and Korean nuts.
The notion of fortress America is a left wing pipe dream embraced by a number of right wingers and libertarians as well. The only thing that prevents jihadists from planning and executing high profile strikes on Americans and American interests is soldiers killing them on a daily basis.
The insurgency was of no importance, except that a large, out-of-place American army was there for their target practice.
The enemy was in Riyadh and Islamabad, and there they remain, undisturbed.