“Just imagine if this were done from the very beginning....”
Then the new Iraqi government might have been too fundamentally and thoroughly infiltrated with their enemies for hope. Our opposition would just have something more profound to crow about.
Besides Rwanda (comment #14), I’m also basing my statement on the coalition death rate. The average was less than 1.4 per day for 5 months after the initial war was over. Then the insurgency started and the death rate soared. But what would one expect 100,000s of low level military and government Sunnis to do?
There is no doubt that the US has an exceptional military and I’d give it a 10. But I think government support and political support based on achieving pre-war objectives was average at best.
A better response.....
In short, in institutions like the military and business, America is the best because they are run as meritocracies. However, the US government is being run as a nepotistic Aristocracy and we are getting predictable results.