George W. Bush and his first secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, continue to insist that the Iraq war was justified and successful. But Bush's second secretary of defense, Robert Gates, has indicated he does not share that sanguine view. From the sound of what he told an audience at West Point last weekend, he has plenty of regret for what they did.

He was addressing the future of the Army, and he told the assembled cadets that it will be different from today's Army: "increasingly challenged to justify the number, size and cost of its heavy formations." Why? Because, he predicted, "the odds of repeating another Afghanistan or Iraq -- invading, pacifying and administering a large third world country -- may be low."

He makes it clear he hopes we have learned something from our disasters in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. "Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as General [Douglas] MacArthur so delicately put it," declared Gates.

I hope Gates' words will be an antidote to the hubris that leads to this sort of disaster. But if there's one thing we've learned from such failures is that the lessons don't stay learned.