That was a deliberate policy and deception engineered by Donald Rumsfeld. Planning was the responsibility of CENTCOM, not the Army, and CENTCOM understood full well that a Phase IV plan was required. Both CENTCOM and the Army also understood what that plan needed to look like. As this article clearly explains, their political masters had a different idea, and worked to ensure that CENTCOM would have neither the plan nor the means to execute an effective post conflict strategy. Rumsfeld thought we could just declare victory and leave.
Donald Rumsfeld and Jerry Bremer will go down in history as two of the biggest idiots to ever appear on the national security scene.
The Army has had decades long, institutional failure to think, plan, equip and train for failed state/no state ...”interventions.”
Long before Rumsfeld. Somolia and Mogadishu should of been an intituional wake up. Heck even the HW Bush ‘Rise Up Kurds’ should of meant something.
The failure lays with the Army General Staff corps.