I thought Brown made two good points: in spite of her obvious bias.

She refereed to research that says political disputes aren't driven by grievance as much as greed. In more practical terms, the people who have the oil in Iraq are never going to share the money with the people who don't: regardless of how much capacity building or hearts and minds work the boots on the ground do. Big problem, if true.

Two: the manual is binary; the political situation in Iraq is multifactional. My pet bugaboo and another huge problem. Arguably, clearing and holding Sadr City gives Maliki less reason to compromise with his opponents: many have wondered if Maliki is actually more interested in using military power to weakening his political opponents than stability. An issue Biddle refers to as "Interest alignment with the host government." (I may or may not have something intelligent to say on this issue later.) But if our objective is political reconciliation, these are the issues that could lead to strategic failure in spite of tactical success.