Polls show that most non-Kurdish Iraqis blame the U.S. for the condition of their country and believe that their situations will improve after we leave. If, some five years after the invasion, this describes the mood of those we came to help, it suggests that we and the Iraqi people will obtain — at best — an Iraq that is worse off than it was before our occupation and one that could provide a breeding ground of resentment against American interests for as long into the future as we can imagine.

http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2008/04/3369506

That Iraq is worse off than it was before the occupation is no revelation: that our anticipated 6-wk incursion has become a 5-yr stalemate implies something's amiss. After all, ideally there was to be no occupation: we see lots about lessons learned, but nobody asked the French & British about their lessons of M.E. or Arab occupation?

As for the grand strategy, ret. Col. Douglas MacGregor's noted in an earlier issue of AFJ (Washington's War) that there was no strategy, only ideology. Our warplanners on the Defense Policy Board knew evil when they saw it; unfortunately, they declined to communicate to the generals exactly how ground forces should know it.

The original "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" episode showed us Vera Miles's character in a stunned trance after a vicious attack; husband Ralph Meeker is determined to have her identify her attacker, & so they roam the city, searching. Meeker dispatches the first man she identifies, but when they're on their way home, she ID's another as her assailant: evidently, any stranger will do.

In a way, shock-entranced U.S. leaders drove us into Afghanistan & Iraq, certain they'd know their quarry when they saw it. In this case, any Arab, Shiite, or Sunni would do.