History doesn't repeat itself - at best it sometimes rhymes. - Mark Twain

Much of the Iraq coverage of the past week (meager as it is) has focused on the fighting in Basra and other Shiite cities. (For a good roll-up of analysis from all sides of the spectrum, check out Small Wars Journal's Debating Basra section.) Most of the discussion seems to focus on three main questions - Why did Prime Minister Maliki initiate the fighting now? What kind of role are US forces playing in the fighting? Will the offensive successfully kill or capture most of the militia members? The fact that these are the primary questions dominating the current discourse shows that we've learned nothing in the last five years.

In fact, the answers to those three questions are pretty straightforward, if unsatisfying. They are: 1. Nobody knows except for him, 2. Lots of firepower and logistics - just like we've been saying for the last year (duh), 3. Given the track record of similar efforts, probably not. The fact that these are the central points of contention shows that most of the folks who pass themselves off as public intellectuals these days are hopelessly mired in tactical and operational minutia, with little to no appreciation of what cohesive strategy actually looks like.

It's instructive to look at where we were five years ago today. US forces, having battled through places like Nasiriyah, Samawah, and Najaf, were taking a operational pause in the sands south of Karbala to refit and prepare for the final push to Baghdad. Various pundits speculated that the US was bogged down, and perhaps would wait for fresh troops to flow in before it could regain momentum for an assault. A few even rolled out the dreaded "q word" - quagmire. No one bothered to ask the apparent question - what's next? What do we do when we actually achieve our objectives? Then, of course, the "Thunder Runs" began, and the bipolar press flipped from doom and gloom to manic cheerleading, as they breathlessly covered building seizures and cheering crowds. Gone were any thoughts of asking how a "lean and mean" force was expected to administer a country of 25 million people whose infrastructure had decayed under decades of mismanagement. Instead we got mute acceptance of platitudes like "freedom's untidy".

We saw similar shortfalls after the fighting between Israel and Lebanon in 2006. An army that largely dominated the battlespace quickly lost the peace, as Hezbollah moved in to help rebuild neighborhoods and compensate victims far faster than the actual Lebanese government. A similar dynamic prevailed in Somalia, hailed initially as a triumph of proxy forces after Ethiopians dislodged the Islamic Courts government. A year later, and almost none of the promised support has materialized, and Somalia is once again on the verge of becoming a failed state. Again, not a single voice was raised to ask what the follow-on plan was.

Now we see a similar pattern in the Basra coverage. We endlessly debate about whether Iraqi forces are ready to stand on their own. We strain semantics as we try to determine whether Iraqi forces are "in the lead". We question the proper usage of US airpower, down to the poundage of weapons used. And in all of it, we blithely ignore the fact that none of these questions really matter. Answering them will not change one iota of ground truth, nor will it help to illuminate potential flaws in planning.

The real question here is, then what? After the militias are routed, what is the Maliki government's plan for provision of basic services to the areas punished by the fighting? How does he plan to rebuild what has been destroyed? In short, how does a government that is routinely criticized for failure to provide services to anyone who isn't a stalwart political ally tackle the challenge of reconstruction?

Until we disengage from tactical navel-gazing and start asking the right questions in a timely manner, we are doomed to see the same farcical chain played out again and again. And Twain's rhyme of history will drum ever louder in our ears.