The U.S. has just spent a tremendous amount of international political capital and money and has also spent American lives to eliminate Iraq as an international supporter of terrorism sitting atop billions upon billions of dollars of oil wealth that can finance such terrorism.
So we will be there for a "long time"?
You betcha.
We will be there until the U.S. knows that a new Iraq can defend itself from the radical jackals that are now waiting to feast on Iraq's carcass.
Let's say that America leaves Iraq "soon" as opposed to in "a long time". Who will rule Iraq two years after we leave?
Iraq will be ruled by the best armed and most violent elements ready to immediately move in to fill the power vaccum left by the U.S. In central and southern Iraq, it will be a power struggle between the forces financed by Syria and the forces financed by Iran. Quite a choice. An Iraq ruled by pro-Syrian Hezbollah zealots or by pro-Iranian Islamic Jihad zealots.
In the north, the Kurds can try to hold their own against the radical elements supported by Iran and Syria and against the "protection" that would come from Turkey.
So what was the whole point of this war?
To hand over Iraq, it's oil wealth and the Iraqi people from the terrorist-supporting Iraqi Baathist oligarchy to the the terrorist-supporting Syrian Baathist oligarchy or to the terrorist-supporting Iranian Islamo-fascist theocracy?
I don't think so. The U.S. did not win this war to simply hand over Iraq and the Iraqi people to Syria or Iran.
Either in force or behind the scences with massive money to support Iraqi death squads to carry out our orders?
Massive money?
If Iranian-backed mullahs wage a "Death to America" campaign against American forces in Iraq, it will not take "massive money" to identify these individuals and "decapitate" that movement.
If the radical Islamist mullahs incite violent attacks against American troops, (as they seem to be trying to do) they make themselves combatants and the U.S. can and will deal with them either by imprisonment or by direct military attack just as the U.S. dealt with the Taliban and with al Qaeda.