Iraq as an episode of Star Trek

The Kobayashi Maru test is one where you're placed in a no-win situation. Once you commit, there's no getting out alive, and no way to even the odds.

I'm not saying that the Bush Administration should have known that invading Iraq was a no-win situation (though you'd think fucking about in other people's civil wars was a lesson we might have learned from earlier incursions in Nicaragua, Haiti, or even Vietnam), but they better be getting the idea by now.
While cutting and running won't work (the dissection of Iraq into its constituent pieces of western Iran, eastern Turkey, and northern Saudi Arabia wouldn't take long), the Iraqis are not going to learn to "just get along", from us or anyone else.
Is there a solution? Not really.
How long should we expect to be there?
Well, let's see, we first sent troops to Korea in 1950. They're still there.
We first sent Marines to Haiti in 1915. We've sent them back a couple of times, and probably will again. (Now there's a 'democracy building' effort that really worked...)
The famed Moro Insurrection, during which we fought suicidal Islamic warriors, is still perking along in the southern Phillippines over a century later.
Is there a clue here?

The Thousand Year War. Better get used to it...