Wretchard blogged this at The Belmont Club

. . . it's easy to see why the one-size-fits-all strategy is so seductive. Diagnosing the roots of an insurgency take time: it requires a vast investment in learning the language and the culture of the area and probably means making a lot of embarrassing mistakes early on -- mistakes which will be ruthlessly punished by press ridicule, committee investigations and combat loss. Accolades will go to those who, standing on the shoulders of their predecessors, apply the winning solution; but ignominy and ridicule are the most likely wages of the guys who show how not to do it, which is pretty important information in and of itself.