I am not interested in the typically ignorant use of the word on this forum. I mean the term exactly as Sun Tsu describes strategy, comprehensively, in The Art of War.
Did our estimates when we laid out our goals - and the required actions and forces to achieve them - include:
1. How we were going to handle the army and deba'athification in a manner that minimized rather than multiplied and radicalized the insurgency, as in fact happened under the Cheney - Bremer policies that were put into place.
2. How many troops were required to occupy hostile territory literally on the other side of the world.
3. The impact on our own strategic mobility and responsiveness of getting tied down to committement in Iraq, which will continue for the next 5 years.
4. The strategic impact of adding $3 Trillion to our national debt, including a tottering banking system, rampant inflation and a falling dollar.
5. The sacrifice of the entirety of the conservative agenda in order to prosecute a war in Iraq.
6. The impact on our national prestige to this entire action. (e.g. even the Saudis who were entirely dependent upon our support for their continuation in power are happy to kick us around).
7. The impact on our own democracy of turning lose Homeland Security on the American public.
8. The impact of $127 oil on an economy that has always relied upon "cheap oil" as our national energy strategy, and the sacrifice of efforts to start down a real road to energy security to the imperatives of a war that has predictably gone on a lot longer than its originators figured on.
Those are just some of the issues that even a cursory and shallow application of a couple of precepts of Sun Tzu would have addressed. This is very short of what a professional strategic planning staff would have considered.
So I don't know how you intend to use the word strategy, and frankly I really don't care.
“The impact on our national prestige to this entire action”
-”I will do whatever the Americans want, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid.”-Gaddafi of Libya
“The impact on our own strategic mobility and responsiveness “
Having a strategically located democratic ally in the heart of the middle east, which willfully hosts our military, is a great disadvantage to our ‘strategic mobility and responsiveness’./s
“The strategic impact of adding $3 Trillion to our national debt”
Where’d you get this number?
“The sacrifice of the entirety of the conservative agenda in order to prosecute a war in Iraq.”
Continued appeasement of a terrorist entity in a post-9/11 world isn’t part of a conservative agenda. It would be part of an appeasement agenda.
“The impact on our own democracy of turning lose Homeland Security on the American public.”
This one is true. In fact, I had several Homeland Security black helicopters hovering over me the other day demanding I hand over my library records.
“The impact of $127 oil on an economy...”
Of course the skyrocketing fuel demands of the Chinese and Indian economies, combined with a refusal to allow the building of new refineries, nuclear plants, or drill for oil by congressional democrats, have no impact on the price of oil. Only the war in Iraq can be blamed. You have the DNC talking points down pat.