Our collective understanding of irregular warfare, while far better than it was at the time of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, is not what it might be. This is less true for soldiers in the fight — whose immediate needs are, of course, for tactical lessons and thus inherently evanescent — than for strategists at home. Washington remains particularly a prisoner of Vietnam analogies and cries out for a larger historical frame of reference.

http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/09/2009743