Ryan C. Crocker, the outgoing US ambassador to Kabul, said American decision-makers must focus on three key facts in charting the country’s course in probable future wars:

They should remember the law of unintended consequences, recognize the limits of the United States’ actual capabilities and understand that getting out of a conflict once you are in can often be dangerous and as destructive for the country as the original conflict, said Crocker, who is most associated with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the New York Times reported.

Crocker, who enjoys some 40 years of experience, expressed his deep skepticism that Americans on foreign soil can be anything other than strangers in a strange land.

“We’re a superpower, we don’t fight on our territory, but that means you are in somebody else’s stadium, playing by somebody else’s ground rules, and you have to understand the environment, the history, the politics of the country you wish to intervene in,” said the envoy who is retiring at the end of July.

Crocker and William J. Burns, then special assistant to the secretary of state, prepared a secret memorandum in 2002 to examine the potential dangers associated with the invasion of Iraq.

They predicted that the operation to attack Iraq, titled “The Perfect Storm,” would rekindle sectarian and ethnic violence after the ouster of Saddam Hussein and engage regional players -- Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran - in a violent brew.

The analysis described with striking accuracy the disintegration of Iraqi society that came to pass.

SF/HJL/MA