Lt. Col. John Nagl, author of the excellent book on counter-insurgency “Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife,” has an article on the Iraq war in the Armed Forces Journal. His bottom-line:

It will take a comprehensive national effort to ensure that all government agencies place the same emphasis on success in Iraq that has marked the military effort there; redouble efforts to provide sufficient interpreters for every American patrol; improve manning, training and equipping of the advisory teams on the front lines of our efforts to improve Iraqi police and army battalions; reshape the intelligence effort in Iraq to provide sufficient properly trained and educated intelligence collectors and analysts to understand and identify the insurgents; and create and employ an information agency to fight and win the war of ideas in Iraq and beyond. These are all long-term investments. Successful counterinsurgency campaigns of the past suggest such improvements will enable us to win in Iraq — if we, as a nation, are patient enough to make the investment that a free Iraq deserves and a secure America requires.
The most important lesson of the past is the critical role of national patience and persistence in defeating an insurgency. We are three years into a counterinsurgency campaign that history suggests will take at least a decade to win. This lesson cannot be repeated too often, sobering though it is for a democracy accustomed to quick victories or speedy withdrawals from intractable conflicts: Insurgencies are long wars.
We should take comfort in the knowledge that armies rarely prepare correctly for the kind of war they will have to fight in the future and, therefore, generally have to adapt to the particular demands of the kind of war they are actually tasked to fight. In the words of British military historian and soldier Sir Michael Howard, “In structuring and preparing an army for war, you can be clear that you will not get it precisely right, but the important thing to ensure is that it is not too far wrong, so that you can put it right quickly.” In Iraq, the U.S. Army is learning counterinsurgency quickly, making up for lost time and making great strides in the effort to help the Iraqi people build a free, stable and secure Iraq. We must not falter in this effort.