I think most of us who have served in Iraq will have unanswered questions for a long time. Most of us lost friends and have seen hundreds of Iraqis killed and displaced. You can build callouses around those memories and move forward as combat vets from every war have. Relative to the conflicts before the Cold War ended our losses were light, but losses for us are not numbers, they're names and vivid memories.

In retrospect the military did well during the initial stage of the war, and after failing to adjust to the subsequent irregular conflict for the first couple of years the military aggressively implemented a new strategy and force posture that effectively suppressed the simultaneous challenges of insurgency, civil war and terrorism. That turned to be more challenging than defeating Saddam's military, which also was not a simple task.

At this point in time I wonder what else can/should the military do? Perhaps a continued presence would prevent major violence from resurfacing, but even that is a questionable assumption based on our recent force posture in country. Would a continued coalition military presence allow Iraq's political process to evolve, or would it simply protect what many Iraqis see as an illegitimate government? I suspect the Iraqi war (different from the U.S. war in Iraq) is unfinished, and perhaps our departure will allow the conflict to evolve to a sustainable end state where true development can really begin? Then again it may plunge Iraq further into the dark ages, it is simply too early to tell.

We in the military made mistakes, but the mistakes we made were largely due to shortfalls in our national level diplomatic and strategic planning. These shortfalls forced the military to conduct patch work diplomacy towards no real end state other than some degree of stability in hopes that democracy would suddenly take root and give the combatants another means to achieve their ends other than fighting. We learned too late that democracy in a country like Iraq is little more than mob rules.

The reason the Powell Doctrine was proposed was an attempt to limit military adventurism by defining clear military objectives and sufficient forces to achieve it, rather than starting off by sticking our toes in the muck and see what happens, or in other words to avoid recon by fire strategy. The reason it wasn't followed is it wasn't/isn't realistic.

From a military perspective our troops did exceptionally well in combat, and regardless of the outcome in Iraq over time they can and should take pride in their military performance and the courage they demonstrated again and again. At the national level we (as citizens) need to maintain pressure on our national leadership to reform the national level strategy process. The voices from the think tanks and those in the administration that promote ideas that are nothing more than hubris need to be counter balanced and debated at length, and then if we decide to venture on, we venture on with more realistic ends than attempting to reform cultures with force. We can do that best through long term engagement. With force we can effectively neutralize threats, but we need to assess if the what comes after makes the use of force desirable. We have more tools in our toolbox than JDAMS and infantry, we need to learn how to use them more effectively in the post Cold War era.