post-war efforts , expressed in the April 2003 draft of a post-war plan , 33 is laid out in its introduction :
1 . History will judge the war against Iraq not by the brilliance of its military execution , but by the effectiveness of the post hostilities activities . Therefore , at the heart of our thinking has been the imperative to avoid a strategically barren victory : that is military achievements that , however impressive in their own right , nonetheless fail to alter the political context in which they occur .
2 . This Unified Mission Plan describes the way in which ORHA intends to empower the Iraqi people to shape their own destiny , once they are free from persecution by Saddam Hussein and his brutal and corrupt regime . It is a civil-military plan for an environment which will see an evolving transition from military to civil primacy , throughout which civil and military actors must be viewed as equal partners . Using classical strategy terms , it seeks to marry the Ends and the Means by setting out the manner in which the latter is applied to the former , in other words , describing the Ways .
In this set of guidelines , we see a fairly nuanced vision with several points worth touching on specifically . First , the intervention overall would be judged based not on how long major combat operations lasted , but on how effective the reconstruction was . Second , the military action existed within a political context , not in isolation . Third , the intent was not to set up an imposed government , but to “ set about empowering the Iraqi people to shape their own destiny .” Fourth , this was by nature an operation in which “ civil and military actors must be viewed as equal partners .”
23