No one is suggesting indefinite occupation. But we need a policy that is going to achieve U.S. national security objectives in the region. The current policy appears to weak to do that.
No one was given endless blood and treasure for anything in Iraq. March 2003 to December 2011 is only 8 years and 9 months. Plus, given the many mistakes that were made early on, the right policy was not in place until 2007. So only 4.5 years after having the right policy in place, the United States was gone. Yet, in that short period of time, Saddam was removed and a functioning state was established although now it is struggling to regain control of 2 of its 18 provinces. U.S. intervention in the middle east has made countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Emirates safer. Iraq would be doing very well if the United States had not abandoned it after 2011. Still, Obama has sent several thousand U.S. troops back to Iraq and has been bombing the enemies of the Baghdad government now for a year. Unfortunately, these actions by Obama have been to weak to accomplish the objectives of retaking the large parts of Al Anbar province and Ninawa Province under control of ISIS. A proper response by Obama in the summer of 2014 would of had these areas of Iraq back under the Iraqi governments control by the end of 2014. As of right now unfortunately, Obama's policy to roll back ISIS is not moving at all. Hopefully in his last year as President he will adopt a more aggressive policy to help Iraq retake its territory in the northwest of the country.
Syria, where there has been little U.S. intervention of any kind at all, has suffered the most of any country in the Middle East in just the past four years. Over 300,000 people are dead and the population is declining at a annual rate of 10%. Obama has started to reverse his hands off policy in Syria as U.S. military has been bombing ISIS and other terrorist positions in Syria, but this is primarily to support U.S./Iraqi operations in Northwest Iraq against ISIS. Syria for the most part is still being left alone and the results have not been good at all.