Are you saying our current presence in those countries is for occupation and rebuilding? No one is saying we'll ever entirely eliminate a U.S. presence from the Gulf, but for crying out loud, we've had troops there for decades. It's all a matter of degree.
We went from hundreds of thousands in Japan to a base on Okinawa. Same with Germany, although we will soon be almost entirely absent from that ungrateful, historical scourge of a country. We helped convert both from totalitarian war-making states to (historically speaking) successful democracies. If we approach that level of success with Iraq, there will be no denying the wisdom of invading when we did.