Military strategy in the coming years

This article, Washington’s war by Col Douglas MacGregor (Ret.) Armed Force Journal (n.d., accessed 10/08/07), is one of the better statements I've seen of the state of the US situation in Iraq:

The human and material cost of America’s occupation of Iraq is reaching a climax. The ongoing “surge” of ground combat troops into Baghdad and its surroundings is producing higher U.S. casualties, exacerbating intersectarian violence and draining the last reserves of American patience.

Like the French Army in Algeria and the British Army in Ireland, the generals in Baghdad are discovering that soldiers and Marines in Iraq control only what they stand on, and when they no longer stand on it, they don’t control it. Meanwhile, the Army grinds itself to pieces while the national military leader¬ship stands by watching, clinging to the promise of more troops for a larger ground force in the future — a promise that is irrelevant to the challenge we now face: getting out of Iraq.

Like so many tragic events in human history, the occupation of Iraq could have been avoided if military and political leaders in Washington had recognized the tectonic shift in international relations created by decolonization after World War II. This shift made any occupation, with the exception of very brief American or European military triumphs over non-Europeans, especially Muslim Arabs, impossible. But the deci¬sion to occupy and govern Iraq with American military power was driven by ideology, not strategy. And, when ideology mas¬querades as strategy, disaster is inevitable.