Quote Originally Posted by tequila View Post
My own feeling is that "cultural acuity", while certainly useful, is definitely not a cure-all or even a genuine prerequisite. While absolutely critical for achieving a clear-eyed analytical picture, it does not help at all if shackled to a politically unrealistic target.

Rory Stewart's analysis of Gertrude Bell seems to be relevant here. It's hard to imagine any Westerner with more genuine field experience and "cultural acuity" than Dame Bell and her contemporaries. Yet they still failed utterly to construct a British-allied, stable Iraq.
I would also submit that the indigenous rulers of what is now Iraq have typically had mixed success at best, and at their worst, did far worse than either the British or the US. Sargon the Great may have been the first historically-recognized conqueror of the Fertile Crescent (now to a great extent the "Shia Crescent"), but he spent a good deal of his time re-conquering those whom he had already conquered. This pattern has remained largely the same for whoever has followed over the last 5,000 years (with few exceptions) as rulers over what is now Iraq.

As is, if the locals, who have far greater understanding of the prevailing conditions than we, cannot sort this out themsleves, then we shouldn't be beating ourselves up too much over our inadequacies in the same areas. This does not relieve Western Armies (and Western policy-makers, et al) of their responsibility to understand and adapt as best they can to said circumstances, but it puts our situation in a clearer perspective.