War College: Operation Iraqi Freedom doomed from start

In a DKos diary, The War College Revolt, a report is highlighted that says all the usual criticisms of the invasion (insufficient troops, disbanding the Iraqi army, etc.) do not get to the root problem. Excerpts:

Though the critics have made a number of telling points against the conduct of the war and the occupation, the basic problems faced by the United States flowed from the enterprise itself, and not primarily from mistakes in execution along the way.

The most serious problems facing Iraq and its American occupiers-- "endemic violence, a shattered state, a nonfunctioning economy, and a decimated society"--were virtually inevitable consequences that flowed from the breakage of the Iraqi state.

It was clearly a mistake to misperceive the size and motives of the insurgency, but it is not so clear that there was a solution to the problem once its scale had been fully appreciated. Most armed opposition was created by the invasion itself and would likely have arisen even had U.S. forces employed milder tactics or employed a different political strategy.

Criticisms of the political course followed by the United States . . . all have merit. At the same time, the more fundamental truth is that the United States had thrust itself into the middle of a bitterly divided society, and there was no apparent way to split the difference between groups whose aims were irreconcilable.

. . . For certain purposes, like the creation of a liberal democratic society that will be a model for others, military power is a blunt instrument, destined by its very nature to give rise to unintended and unwelcome consequences. Rather than "do it better next time," a better lesson is "don't do it at all."

. . .The profound neglect given to re-establishing order in the military's prewar planning and the facile assumption that operations critical to the overall success of the campaign were "somebody else's business" reflect a shallow view of warfare. [And my personal favorite:] Military planners should consider the evidence that occupation duties were carried out in a fashion--with the imperatives of "force protection" overriding concern for Iraqi civilian casualties that risked sacrificing the broader strategic mission of U.S. forces.

As Shockwave, the diarist, wrote: "This study indicts Rumsfeld and Cheney and Bush and the neo-cons. The gambled our geopolitical future against their best advice on an unproven theory." Let alone how many thousand Iraqi civilaiin casualties?

Tell me again how The Regime is any better than a terrorist organization? Ah, yes: uniforms. Thankfully at least some wearing the uniforms get it.