Josh Marshall raises an essential historical question:

At the risk of asking a really silly question, can we list off the successful counterinsurgency operations in history? I got to thinking about this because I frequently hear about how the Brits are the pros at counterinsurgency. And they certainly fought quite a few of them -- and on many continents. They're the pros. On the other hand, pretty much by definition, they lost every one.

To analyze this properly, it's essential think about the context of all the past counter-insurgencies - the occupying power was a long-established power, whether imperial/colonial or local.

That meant it had cultural ties, institutional roots, and local allies.

The U.S. had none of these - just a few untrustworthy exiles on the CIA payroll who were despised by the Iraqi people.

We invaded with the propaganda of "liberation," both for Iraqi and U.S. consumption. The Neocons thought this propaganda would overcome the hostility of the proud Iraqi people to a U.S. invasion, or at least weaken that hostility enough for the U.S. to "get by," which is all Bush's strategists ever aim for (think Florida 2000 or Petraeus 2007).

Bush's real plan was to invade with overwhelming brute force and expect everyone in the country to bow to his will. That was the point of "shock and awe" - to terrify the Iraqi people into submission right from the outset.

Against all odds and history, that Bush-Neocon strategy might have worked if:

1. we sent enough troops to establish order on the streets, rather than letting the looting and violence get out of control and immediately turning the "liberated" population against us.

2. we cut a deal with Saddam's army to keep them employed, rather than putting 500,000 men with military training out of work, thereby starving 10 times that number of dependents, and leaving the men humiliated and seeking revenge.

3. we secured the weapons depots that allowed the counter-insurgency to fight us with lethal IED's, rather than letting Iraqis walk right into the depots and take everything they wanted.

But even then it probably would not have worked because the crucial element of our "regime change" plan was a massive experiment in social engineering: taking a nation run by a Sunni minority and handing it over to their enemies, the Shia majority that they long suppressed, including the massacre of 200,000 following the Shia uprising after Gulf War I.

This Shia minority wanted revenge against the Sunnis, not compromise. That's why the U.S. refused to turn the government over to them immediately, and went through a three-year process of struggling to write a Constitution that gave Sunnis just enough minority rights to participate. That process never succeeded; only a small segment of Sunnis participated in the government, while most Sunnis tried to kill us. Meanwhile the the Shia government we created used its sectarian militias to wipe out Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad, which further fueled the Sunni insurgency.

So the whole Neocon strategy was a disaster from start to finish. If there was any sanity in Washington they would all be on trial for war crimes. Until then, Iraqis and Americans will continue to suffer and die.