Steve the Planner, those are some great insights and I hope others contribute their own over time. Being a grunt in 03 and a find, fix, finish dude in 07 I was constantly wondering where those civilian leaders/problem solvers were. It was clear from my optic that the military was unintentionally impeding progress, because the people sat and stewed waiting for the conquerors to lead, and for a while we didn't because we didn't know who was in charge or what direction to go in, and then spontaneously most units starting doing reconstruction work on their own learning a lot of hard lessons over the years. I don't blame the players at the tactical level (either military or civilian), but some of the players at the national level should have known better (we have ample history to draw from).

Surferbeetle, in time a new, more liberal Middle East may emerge, but I doubt it will be the result of our invasion of Iraq. Rather it will be result of our ideas being shared and embraced through diplomacy, education, trade, etc. that ultimately will weaken the current oppressive regimes. It will be their revolution, not ours. Perhaps I'm not given certain strategists enough credit for their vision, but it appears to be that they thought we could rather easily impose political, social and cultural change in Iraq, or worse they just assumed it would naturally blosom after Saddam fell, and it would create a domino effect. That social-political experiment failed. Other things may work out in our favor over the long run.

Sadly the news coming out of Egypt is mixed, and there remains a good (perhaps strong) possibility that the Islamists will ultimately rule, start killing off the Coptic Christians and declare the Peace Treaty with Israel void. I remain neutral, not optimistic or pestimestic at this point.