Bin Laden recognizes he is beaten, though he does not indicate any real understanding of the reason for his loss, preferring to speak of vague mistakes and lack of unity:
Bin Laden doesn't discuss how the Americans defeated him. It was done with data. Years of collecting data on the bad guys paid off. Month by month, the picture of the enemy became clearer. This was literally the case, with some of the intelligence software that created visual representations of what was known of the enemy, and how reliable it was. The picture was clear enough to maneuver key enemy factions into positions that make them easier to run down.
Instead of drawing up nice plans of governing structures and new roads, why don't we spend our pre-war preparation time building up similar databases of leaders and groups in the target nation? This might be a good task for the CIA and other intelligence agencies to focus on, building on those country studies.
Such detailed knowledge of the society and political elites of a potential enemy would be useful for a lot more than just suppressing an insurgency. We could use it to target sanctions, foster a revolt or revolution, or sow dissent and suspicion among the ruling elites.
If we had a database of local actors anywhere near what we have today, we'd have rolled up the insurgency a lot faster and perhaps prevented al Qaeda from effectively invading Iraq and dragging the killing out years longer.
