I recall believing - and writing - before the Iraq war that while defeating Saddam's military forces would be relatively easy, installing a new government and bringing it to a functional level was likely to be a very formidable task for which the US had little effective capacity. I think a fair number of people pointed out that mission creep in Afghanistan and the emergence of "nation-building" roles was handing the military a role that is not trained or equipped to perform.
Obviously nobody listened, but that doesn't mean we can't learn from those mistakes. To learn from them, though, we have to recognize them, and that means recognizing that the root problem is not lack of capacity in the military but the decision to assign the military a set of tasks that are simply not suited to achievement by a military force. The whole concept of "armed nation building" was fatally flawed from the start. My opinion only, of course.
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