India, Sept. 11 -- 46 in the morning on September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 11 flew into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Three plane crashes and almost 3,000 deaths followed. The US shut down. The City That Never Sleeps collapsed. And US television shows stopped running ads for a full two weeks - a cultural indicator of just how shocking and unprecedented the attacks were. Yet the greater and more insidious damage was caused by the changes in US strategy after 9/11, where the Bush administration abandoned the hard-earned lessons from the Vietnam War. The US has yet to correct these wrong turns.

Successful grand strategy depends on establishing and communicating clear objectives, calculating the appropriate means to ac...