Lessons of the Iraq War?

A timely and accurate analysis of what went wrong and how.

Top 10 Lessons of the Iraq War - By Stephen M. Walt | Foreign Policy

In addition to Stephen Walt's list, I also think there were two big problems revealed by the Iraq war from the occupation in 2003 onwards:

(1) Resourcing - there were simply never enough ground forces in-country to truly enforce order, both in the Sunni West and in the Shia South.  One significant difference between the supposed neocon model of Europe in 1945 and the reality of Iraq in 2003 was (A) most (sadly not all) Europeans wanted the Allies to come in and remove the Nazis in 1945 and (B) the Allies had destroyed the Wehrmacht, and then occupied Germany and Austria with overwhelming numbers of troops.  The German werewolf threat never materialised.  Whereas in Iraq, few Iraqis wanted the Coalition there and then, undefeated, disgruntled Iraqi Army personnel and foreign fighters helped to form the Sunni insurgency, which quickly started attacking Coalition Forces and Shia sites and then the Shia militias arose as well to defend their own and to effectively seize power.  Chaos throughout 2003 and 2004 allowed the sectarian fissure to become a full-on civil war.  By 2006, Baghdad and western Iraq were sectarian battlegrounds.

(2) Leaders -- sadly, the pro-consuls sent to Iraq in 2003-2004 were not brilliant.  Paul Bremer was not Douglas MacArthur.  The Bremer decision to disband the Iraqi Army and dismiss from Government service all of the Iraqis who had kept it running, was an act of insanity. Most of the Coalition's senior commanders and officials had no deep knowledge of Iraqi or even Arab culture.  I suspect this is because the most knowledgeable diplomats were against the war and because the most experienced strategist-soldiers (eg GEN Anthony Zinni) had retired.  It is difficult to believe that the Allied occupation forces in 1944-1945 were as poorly prepared as the Coalition commanders were to take charge of an Arab and Islamic country.

There was also a moral problem that should be discussed as well alongside any lessons.  In 2003-2004, there was conduct at Abu Ghraib prison that disgraced the US military and from which the Coalition Forces never subsequently recovered.  Even now it is shocking.  From then on, whatever residual goodwill may have existed among locals for the Coalition was gone.  That conduct arose, in part, from a determination on the part of some, after 9/11, to dehumanise any enemies and treat suspected members of the Iraqi insurgency as ripe for acts of bestial cruelty and perversion.  That conduct was possible in part because the military is a reflection of society and, since the 1960s, traditional moral values in western societies have on any viewed eroded.  It is impossible to believe that in WWI or WWII there was any requirement to train young troops in how to treat captured prisoners, at least in terms of not committing acts of perversion on them.  In 2003, it was, it seems, sadly necessary.  If ever there was a lesson in what happens when a military does not teach and enforce basic Judeo-Christian morality among its own ranks, then this was it.  Sadly, one unit's feral behaviour cast a pall over the honourable and decent conduct of others who served in Iraq.  All of the officers in that unit's chain of command should have been held accountable, not just the junior enlisted personnel.