Much of what has violently challenged us in the past couple of decades is not truly "war," so while certainly US leadership has been strategically confused in terms of what it has tried to do and how it has tried to do it, I would add that Sir Hew is equally confused in his assessment.
While war is violence and war is politics, not all violence is war nor is all politics war either.
Conditions put in place for implamenting a containment strategy for the pre-globalized era of the Cold War certainly were not somehow conditions designed to extend indefinitely into a rapidly evolving world.
Most of the conflict we deal with today is a function of populations (many held artificially static by a wide range of factors) are now released and evolving in their expectations of governance far faster than the systems of governance perceived to be affecting them are either able or willing to evolve along with them. The result is friction and conflict.
Domestic policies lag and the result (when inadequate legal, certain and trusted mechanisms for change exist) is illegal politics - better known as revolutionary insurgency. This may manifest violently or through more peaceful, but equally illegal, tactics.
When foreign policies lag the result is not unlike what occurs during a physical foreign occupation. A de facto "occupation by policy" that generates a very similar resistance insurgency energy that enables organizations such as AQ to rise to the degree of influence they hold these past several years and results in acts of protest and transnational terrorism.
This is not great mystery, but neither is much of it "war."
Governments, being made up of politicians, do not take responsibility for their short comings, but rather blame them on those who dare to challenge them. So we attack the symptoms, and largely leave the true causes of this negative energy unaddressed. Too often our efforts to attack the symptoms make the problems worse...
Bookmarks