In most fields there are normative facts that all experts know and the public never hears.
Two military facts that get exposed by Edward Luttvak, an expert I respect, are given as follows. (1) There are only two mighty military forces in the world (the other one is Israel, which Luttvak doesn't mention...he was an Israeli general earlier in his career) and (2) the enemies in Iraq don't care who invaded them and defeated Saddam's Army.
"One lesson of recent wars, both medium
and small, is that in spite of the ill
repute of unilateralism and the virtuous
connotations of multilateralism, it actually
does not matter very much if allies
can be rounded up or not. These days the
distribution of usefully deployable military
power is so spectacularly uneven that
our most valiant British ally cannot quite
sustain 16,000 troops in Afghanistan and
Iraq, while the others cannot match half
that number. Even a total round-up of
all that NATO, plus the Russians, plus
the Chinese, could sustain in an expeditionary
deployment overseas, plus all
the odds and sods that respond to a U.N.
summons for peacekeeping troops (there
is money in it for the likes of the Bangladesh
East Bengal Regiment), would yield
a total force smaller than the U.S. Marine
Corps, and infinitely less capable.True, even the Marine Corps is mostly
ineffective against enemies who refuse
to wear uniforms and to assemble in
conveniently targetable combat formations—
alas, the only enemies that are encountered
these days; but the others can
be downright embarrassing. There are
many cases of units in U.N. or even NATO
service that simply refused to fight when
the situation urgently required it and the
rules of engagement definitely allowed
them to do so. There are quite a few cases
of abject surrenders to outnumbered and
outgunned aggressors, including African
child soldiers, and at least one case of a
complete national contingent (a Guinean
unit in Sierra Leone) that promptly sold
all its U.N.-supplied weapons, ammunition,
and uniforms to the rebels they were
supposed to fight, then demanded to be
resupplied. (They were.)Politically, too, it is now clear that even
the broadest multilateralism would not
help much in facing today’s enemies. For
Islamist insurgents, there is no difference
between American, French, Russian, or
Chinese infidels, and they are even more
antagonistic to Muslim rulers who reject
their ultra-fanaticism to cooperate
with the United States. Had Bush & Co.
succeeded in building a vast coalition
to invade Iraq in 2003 --- had
the Russians, Chinese, Egyptians, Saudis,
and French too come along for the ride
to Baghdad—it would have made no difference
to the insurgents. Variegated as
they are, none would have recognized
the legitimacy of the invaders and therefore
desisted from fighting. For the Sunni
Arabs of Iraq, no form of elected majority
rule is acceptable. Always a minority,
they always dominated the priest-ridden
Shia, who are fatally divided by deadly
priestly rivalries; and they firmly believe
that they can dominate the Shia again as
soon as the invaders leave."
Edward Luttwak, The New Republic 8/6/2007