What the U.S. Military Still Hasn’t Learned From Iraq

"But part of the failure very much lies with the military. The American armed forces remained institutionally committed to the traditional way of doing war, which emphasizes defeating an opposing state’s own armed services. U.S. commanders therefore focused on calculating the type and amount of forces required to win against Saddam’s military—not what kind of forces they would also need once the regime had crumbled. As a result, once Saddam was driven from office, the United States and its allies had to haphazardly pivot from dynamic, rapid major combat operations to slower-moving and lower-level protracted ones. Suddenly, there was a whole new set of numbers and equations that the United States needed to consider, as the mission, enemy, and culture altered and expanded dramatically and the military’s task expanded beyond winning in military battles (which is, itself, complicated enough). For example, the West’s lack of knowledge of and appreciation for entities and armed organizations other than states—including tribes and clans—made it impossible to properly plan. The U.S. military, intensely focused on physical geography, failed to realize that religion, culture, and ethnicity are also a type of terrain."