Not to be a smart ass but could that mean that war is indeed war?
Yes

most people in the world resent our interference and 'help.' Strongly.
Frequently the reality to the host nation is that we're bullying our way in, we're assaulting their culture, and we're condescending. Determining how we assist to avoid these perceptions is as important as the amount of assistance we provide.

Thus, I suggest the real issue is not how do we get better at fighting a war; we can do that and we adapt pretty well -- the issue is what wars we get into and what the goals are.
The quote above doesn't nest with the quote below. I agree we adjust to the "fighting" piece pretty quickly, but borrowing GEN Giap's message to us, it doesn't matter if we won every battle we still lost. Our troops on the tip of the spear will generally out adapt the enemy in the tactical fight, but our operational and strategic adaptability is often left wanting. When we say war is war, we mean destroying the enemy directly in combat. It should be that simple, but unfortunately it isn't.

We don't have a good track record for wrestling because we've tried to box against wrestlers, judokas and karatekas.
the problem is that we clumsily create problems and don't intervene until it's too late and the problems have become unbelievably complex and not totally conducive to a military solution.
We don't have a political culture that encourages preventative action. We'll talk about it, we'll write about it, but it is a different story when it comes to resourcing it. Why spend money and dedicate resources to prevent a problem when we have a problem we need to solve? Our resources are finite, so it is hard to counter this logic.

A hard sell, but I agree we have to pick our fights very carefully, some simply are not winable. Assuming we get drawn into less fights in the future, we could focus more effort on isolating the trouble spots by focusing on preventative efforts on the periphery.

So I am reading you correctly here Ken, the Powell Doctrine is a good thing?
IMHO GEN Powell had good intentions (it is called the Powell doctrine, but several Vietnam Vets contributed to its development), but a doctrine that ignores reality is simply not functional. Despite howls of protest from the military we got involves in Bosnia and Kosavo, Somalia, stayed in Afghanistan after routing the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and the list goes on. How can the Powell doctrine be considered feasible as a guiding light for our military?