The best America's early disaster in Iraq can produce is a warning for future endeavors. If they will but listen, the occupation's mistakes can teach succeeding leaders the importance of good planning, of expecting the worst, of adapting to conditions no matter what the politics dictate.
Unfortunately, that's not a lesson Washington appears to have picked up, at least so far. A new Government Accountability Office report says that even after the disaster of the first few years, even with the tactical success of the past several months, the Pentagon remains without a real strategy for victory in Iraq.
"Weaknesses in 'the way forward' and the Joint Campaign Plan are symptomatic of recurring weaknesses in past U.S. strategic planning efforts," concludes the report issued last week by the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress.
The administration's strategies "lacked clear purpose, scope, roles and responsibilities, and performance measures." By the standards of bureaucratese, that is a remarkably harsh indictment of American policy and purpose in Iraq, five years after the war began.
The report argues that the administration's estimates of progress in Iraq are too optimistic. That while violence is falling, Iraqi military and political progress is too halting.
The GAO and the White House can't even agree on basic facts. The GAO, as The New York Times reported, concluded that 10 percent of Iraqi battalions are ready to take a lead role in security; the administration puts that figure at 70 percent.
The president's team responded to the criticism in a way that will sound far too familiar: "The New Way Forward strategy remains valid," wrote Christopher Straub, the acting deputy assistant secretary of Defense for the region. "We recognize, as with all strategies, updates and refinements occur at various intervals to take into account changes in the strategic environment."
Even as Congress and the administration were arguing over the current campaign in Iraq, The Times also reported that bureaucratic foot-dragging was making it harder to do what should be Job 1: Capturing top al-Qaida leaders.
While Osama bin Laden's network has been rebuilt in Pakistan's mountainous tribal areas, that country's leaders and Washington dithered and fought, and U.S. agencies waged turf battles.
Six months ago, the Pentagon drew up a new plan to cut through all that, and to free U.S. commandoes to go get the bad guys. Except that "the plan has been held up in Washington by the very disagreements it was meant to eliminate."
And so bin Laden's terrorists continue to plan their evil and operate relatively unmolested.
Even in Washington, mistakes have the power to teach us things. Unless we won't learn. In that case, we simply make the same old errors, over and over again.
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