So do you think we should have just gotten out of Germany once Adolf put a bullet in his brain?
read the entire article
Occupying a nation that has faced an overwhelming military defeat is a lot different than sending a glorified version of the Peace Corps to maintain law and order in a Third World sh!t-hole.
A closer parallel would be Korea. Did we pull out in 1953? How much has it cost to provide a shield over South Korea and Japan (and Taiwan)for fifty-six years? The flaw in Nixon's plan was not leaving a trip-wire force along the 17th Parallel as we did along the 38th parallel in Korea and in West Berlin in Germany, as a guarantor of good faith.
we defeated germany and japan - decimated them. did we do that in iraq? OK, you can make the case that this wasn't required as part of the initial invasion. But then even after that, we were reluctant to use acute US force as needed. not indiscriminate carpet bombing mind you, but a hell of alot more force then we've seen so far, especially in the sunni triangle. even to this day, we don't do it. we know material (IEDs, weapons, people) is coming in from iran and syria - do we bomb the border region? no. and on and on.
I don't know who made these decisions - my own sense for some time is that Bush has been poorly served by the decisions of the pentagon generals - Abizaid, etc. He should have been replacing them some time ago, but for whatever reason - he hasn't done it.
we've placed all out bets on the iraqis being able to come up to speed on security and political agreements. and they haven't done a very good job of that. they've made progress, but its slow, and with the american media grinding a negative message into the sheeple everyday, the political clock on being able to sustain our efforts in iraq is running out.