In the fall of 2005, I wrote an article on the Open Source War in Iraq for the New York Times (you can read it here). It examined our various options in Iraq, dismissing each in turn.
One option was innovation:First, out-innovating the insurgency will most likely prove unsuccessful. The insurgency uses an open-source community approach (similar to the decentralized development process now prevalent in the software industry) to warfare that is extremely quick and innovative. New technologies and tactics move rapidly from one end of the insurgency to the other, aided by Iraq's relatively advanced communications and transportation grid - demonstrated by the rapid increases in the sophistication of the insurgents' homemade bombs. This implies that the insurgency's innovation cycles are faster than the American military's slower bureaucratic processes (for example: its inability to deliver sufficient body and vehicle armor to our troops in Iraq).This was confirmed again in March 2006 with this quote from an Associated Press article:
Lt. Col. Bill Adamson, operations chief for the anti-IED campaign, was realistic about the challenge in a Pentagon interview. "They adapt more quickly than we procure technology," he said of the insurgents.It is also important to note, the article concluded that it wasn't possible to win in Iraq. The best we could do was put uniforms on loyalist paramilitaries (ethnic and religious militias) to create a level of "controlled chaos" -- that would allow the US to depart. This was exactly what happened. Unfortunately, this "controlled chaos" we helped to manufacture was only a window of time and not a permanent condition. That window is rapidly closing and we may have squandered our last opportunity to depart intact.