it should be this:
Quote Originally Posted by Cavguy View Post
...professional malpractice on the part of the Army, because in my opinion that failure prolonged our stay in Iraq and thus cost soldiers' lives.
as amplified by this:
The Greek tragedy in all this is that the "learning" was mostly "re-learning" what was sitting on the shelves of our library. Men died because we failed to train or appreciate the lessons of past counterinsurgency warfare....
He's obviously not alone:
Quote Originally Posted by Rob Thornton View Post
...It is a strong indictment from Niel's (and from mine) perspective given that many of the leaders who'd determined our DOTMLPF path...for whatever reasons, they left a hole where that knowledge should have been.(emphasis added /kw)
Because those are truths; they are not just a theory, they are a statement of fact and many of us know it all too well. We cannot know that had the failure not occurred, Iraq would have been different -- but we can speculate and I submit the possibility that it might have been only 10% better would have saved several hundred lives. It's not a Greek Tragedy -- it's an American tragedy. One that must not be repeated.

There is also this:
Quote Originally Posted by Gian P Gentile View Post
...Again, an indicator of a thoughtful article is its ability draw out debate. I am not being critical of Niel, but drawing on his fine article to apply criticism and thought to problems that I see in the US Army.
True on the first part.On the latter portion, no one can object to that and your opinions have merit and weight. However, I too can apply criticism after much extremely long and hard thought to problems that I see in the US Army today; there are three that are IMO quite critical:

Too many seniors are reluctant to trust their subordinates; This either causes or is caused by risk aversion -- I'm still trying to determine which but I do know inadequate training is at the root of it. Those are the first two items. Lastly but most importantly -- and in the vein of this thread -- I see a very worrisome and strong trend on the part of some senior people to return as quickly as possible to business as usual...

That is not a good idea.