Column 120

America's hard-earned lessons from Iraq

As the Bush administration winds down and Americans feel real accomplishment on Iraq after years of tough slogging, here's a dozen lessons learned for our nation.

1) War is easy, but peace is hard.

America's Leviathan force handles any conventional threat out there, so our enemies refuse to fight straight up. Instead, they sit out the war, waiting to bleed us -- asymmetrically -- in the peace. If we can't master postwar environments, we'll achieve no lasting victories in this long war against radical extremism.

2) We once understood nation building, but we've had to learn it all over again.

Read on at KnoxNews.
Read on at Scripps Howard.

Comments

[Jarrod Myrick]

We must have legitimacy to maximize power.

[Bill C.]

From your introductory sentence: "As the Bush administration winds down and Americans feel real accomplishment on Iraq after years of tough slogging ...."

I do not seem to get this impression from the American people.

I get the overall impression that the American people feel that Iraq, like Vietnam, was a bad idea.

And I believe that Americans think that the present posture of Iraq (little important political progress made -- military/security situation exceptionally fragile) is not something that they should or could call "a real accomplishment."

The American people might, instead, call the present posture of Iraq, after years of tough slogging, to be (1) exceptionally disappointing and (2) extremely tentative and dangerous.

And the "frontier-integration" analogy and need for emphasis on the post-war?

Unfortunately, I do not see them remembering Iraq -- and/or the lessons Iraq -- in this way.

Instead, I believe that, in the future, Iraq -- like Vietnam -- may well be remembered as (1) a fiasco, (2) an error in foreign policy strategy and judgment and (3) a factor in compromising the economy (and, thereby, security) of the United States.

[Lexington Green]

Almost the "elevator speech" version of the entire Barnett body of work. Mountains of detail left out, just the top line conclusions left in. Hopefully readers who are not used to seeing these things described this way will swim upstream to the blog and the books and learn more.

[Hugh]

Iraq is not 'Nam, Bill. Its a beachhead to the greater middle east. This ain't over yet.

[Tom Barnett]

Bill C.,

I don't get the impression that you've agreed with anything I've written for roughly a year now.

On that basis alone it may be time to move on to a different blog or start one yourself, because you seem out of place here.

I don't expect people to agree with me all the time, but some of the time is required. Otherwise it's just nonstop trolling.