Tom Friedman gets it just about right in this morning's New York Times:

[A]fter 9/11, trying to build a decent state in the heart of a drifting Arab-Muslim world — a world that is manufacturing millions of frustrated, unemployed youths — was worth trying. But it takes resources and legitimacy, and the Bush team has provided too little of both.

From the start, this has always been a Karl Rove war. Lots of photo-ops, lots of talk about "I am a war president," lots of premature banners about "Mission Accomplished," but totally underresourced, because the president never wanted to ask Americans to sacrifice. The Bush motto has been: "We're at war, let's party — let's cut taxes, forgo any gasoline tax, not mobilize too many reserves and, by the way, let's disband the Iraqi Army and unemploy 500,000 Iraqi males, because that's what Ahmad Chalabi and his pals want us to do." [...]

Without more allies, without more global legitimacy — and without an Iraqi center ready to stand up against their Khmer Rouge now posing as their Viet Cong — we cannot win in Iraq. We will be building a house with bricks and no cement. In that case, we will have to move to Plan B. Too bad we never really had Plan A.

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