Iraq lessons Great start on these  from Clifford May.  Better intel,  Iraqi gov't in exile,  stem militias (but my way below a bit more direct than his), more forceful anti-intervention from Syria and Iran, and especially more publicity from Bush that fighting an insurgency is long, slow, and hard.

 
First lesson, on philosophy:
Only Iraqis can win in Iraq -- this should always have been known, supported, and promoted.

Where is language training? Since 9/11, everybody in the US military, and the Reserves, should be required to take Arabic (or Farsi - Persian, Iran) lessons; with those showing an aptitude to get bonus cash and possible promotion.  And a transfer to Iraq.

Where is the big military program to learn how to do most rapid language learning?  Open source English-Arabic on-line dictionaries and translation?  Verbal Arabic Words to Text programs, and recordings; as well as Optical Character Scanning of Arabic documents.

On political organization, why not use Switzerland as a better model?  The terrible Proportional Representation democracy, like Israel and most Euro countries have, contributes to democratic fanaticism.  Geographic districts would be much better, and less radical.  The 18 Iraq provinces could become like Swiss Cantons.  And Iraq would be more peaceful, sooner, if they did.

An Oil-Fund for Iraq citizens should have been declared, and cash distributed to those registering for it -- which would become a voter reg replacement to the food ration cards.

Voters, citizens, plus their houses AND cars should have been registered in computer DBs.  And the cars tracked more closely.

The imperfect Iraqi leader we had, Chalabi, needed more unified US support -- to be clearly only a transition figure. 

Local elections for a mayor/ city councilors should have been done immediately -- and the non-officer Army men should have been recalled to their parent's homes to form a local Security Force, to replace the police force (usually police are more corrupt than army conscripts); and to be under the control of the city council appointed head Sheriff. 

US reconstruction aid should only go thru elected local Iraqis -- with a local Data Base of all expenditures (like what PorkBusters wants for the US!). 

But MOST reconstruction cash should be municipal bonds, which the US gov't underwrites, controlled by the Iraqis.  So when Iraqi terrorists destroy reconstruction, they're destroying Iraqi reconstruction.