Reflections on the Iraq War: Implications for U.S. Foreign Policy

Our foreign policy elites, the press, our elected representatives and the general public internalize “lessons” from each war, although the lessons may be wrong or misapplied. How we arrive at such consensus lessons is a mystery. It is too early to predict what lessons from Iraq will guide future U.S. decision-making. But on the situation as it now stands, it is possible to make some broad generalizations concerning what went right in Iraq and what went wrong.