And somehow the folks at the McClatchy Washington Bureau make this sound like a bad thing:

WASHINGTON —When U.S. forces crossed the Kuwaiti border into Iraq in the pre-dawn hours of March 20, 2003 , the military set out to shock and awe the Middle East with the swiftest transformation the region had ever seen.

Five years and hundreds of billions of dollars later, it’s the U.S. military that’s been transformed. The efficient, tech-savvy Army , built, armed and trained to fight conventional wars against aggressor states, is now making deals with tribal sheiks and building its power on friendly conversations with civilians.

Instead of planning for quick, decisive battles against other nations, as it was five years ago, today’s American military is planning for protracted, nuanced conflicts with terrorist groups, insurgents, guerrillas, militias and other shadowy forces that seldom stand and fight.

The idea that our military is always prepared to fight the last war is cliche that has no small amount of the truth in it.  Our initial invasion of Iraq was a shinning success for our military.  We stormed into Iraq and took Baghdad with Saddam’s forces, which were not insignificant, folding like a house of cards in a hurricane.  We were successful because our military has been training and equipping itself to face that sort of challenge for decades.  At conventional warfare there is no fighting force in the world that can match the US military.

But where we hit a snag was the time after the invasion, when we began facing the remnants of Saddam’s supporters as well as other enemies (al Qaeda, etc.) in an insurgency-style battle.  Our military, particularly the Army, was not structured for such an engagement.  But now that’s what we’re planning for, and for good reason.  The world is a much different place than it was even just a decade ago.  No longer is war from another nation the primary threat to our nation.  In the post-9/11 world the threats we face are from extremist ideologies that fester in the oppressed areas of the world (i.e. the middle east) and attack us from there.

So our military has evolved to face that threat, though I’d disagree with the idea that we are no longer “planning” for conflicts against other nations.  While our military is learning how to face insurgent threats of the sort posed by al Qaeda and other groups in the middle east, our ability to engage and defeat any other nation’s military remains unimpeded.  We still enjoy near complete maritime and air supremacy globally.  Our carriers can project power over entire continents, and our bombers can hit targets on the other side of the globe while still taking off and landing within our home borders.

I think the intent here is to suggest that the Iraq war has made our military less capable, and while I’ll accept that we’re certainly expending a significant portion of our resources in Iraq and Afghanistan, our military is simply evolving as it always has.