I have said in other threads that I am of the firm belief that had we committed a far larger amount of troops and buried Iraq under military law for a year or two postdating the initial ground assault, we would be in a very different situation.

That having been said, Iraq has served as an excellent showcase as to precisely what a conventional Army is not meant to do - I personally believe that the ideas of "soft power", "light footprint", "scaled conflict" and all that noise ought to be saved for America's unconventional forces. Conventional forces (particularly maneuver elements) are primarily concerned with breaking things and killing people, and/or enabling other individuals to more effectively break things and kill people. Any mission that does not involve the aforementioned breaking and killing is something that these troops have not been adequately prepared for. This is pretty much what one might have expected from such a low-grade conflict.

Iran is a symptom (albeit a larger one) of the much larger problem of fundamental Islam. Call it the beginning of a culture clash or what-have-you, but I still believe that a stiff slap to Iran is the way to go. I do not believe that the United States will ever manage to maintain good, working relations with that country for the simple fact that they see themselves as incompatible with the Western world in general.