Mistakes will always be made in war...nothing goes as planned. And despite the missteps, it was still a relative cakewalk when you compare it to past conflicts.
I note that the drive-bys never mentioned the first part of this, “On Point” I, which showed that the initial invasion was pretty close to perfect. Oh no. Can’t mention that.
I agree with this statement. I don't like the term "mistake" in this context, but only that it is sometimes used in the media to argue that the war has not been competently fought. I think it has been.
For example, some say that more troops (the "surge") should have been sent in earlier. This implies that the same surge would have surely had the same effect in earlier years. I don't think that's certain at all. It might have gone very ~differently~ but I don't think anyone can guarantee that it would have been ~better~. It may possibly have been far, far worse. In COIN, more troops also means more targets and often more casualties.
The real reason that the surge is working is that it coincided with the "Anbar awakening" which has rolled like a tide of changed hearts all across the country. Could that have happened earlier? Maybe-- but maybe not. The local sheiks turned against Al Queda mainly because of their fatigue of dealing with Al Queda and their obscene brutality. The conditions that awoke them and turned them (and others like the 1920s Brigades) toward the U.S. took those years to develop. It's impossible to know with any clarity if it might have happened earlier.
Also the de-Baathification and disbanding of the Iraqi Army, both done by Bremer immediately after the fall of Baghdad are called mistakes today. Maybe they were, but again, had those not been done things would have developed differently but not automatically better. There would have been a whole different set of problems in that path just there have been problems on this path. How it really would have gone is just not knowable.
It's essential of course to recognize the points where things have gone badly and not according to plan, and to try to game up some alternatives for next time. But that's not the same as assuming that those alternatives would have worked any better.
I have challenged my anti-war friends on several occasions to come up with just one example of any war in history, that meets the scope of this one, that has gone better. The scope of the achievement, the complexity of the aftermath, and the number of casualties (on *both* sides) puts this war and its fighters in very select company indeed.
IMHO.
The most well-written operations order will rarely survive the first enemy contact. All it can do is provide a framework for decision-making that is tempered by the current context of actions underway, both friendly and enemy.
After-action reports are how any organization gets better and the Army has always been well-regarded for its bluntness in presenting the facts and findings in its AA reports. As usual, the DBM hasn't a clue in these matters and couldn't catch a clue while standing in the middle of a herd of clues, wearing clue musk during clue mating season.