As military campaigns go, the Anglo-Australian-Polish-American assault on Iraq was mercifully quick, and dreadfully one-sided. Arm-chair generals are already detailing on cable TV the results and suggesting that it has forever changed the way war is fought. At the margins, they could be right, but the fact of the matter is that a vastly superior military beat a technologically inferior one using strategies and tactics as old as Field Marshal Rommel if not older. There ain't no revolution.
General Tommy Franks has come in for some criticism in certain quarters, but unlike the politicians and diplomats who made a mockery of the opening days of the conflict, General Franks followed a number of simple precepts to win. First, he treated the desert like an ocean and kept his forces mobile. Second, he used airpower rather than ground forces whenever possible -- Iraq's airforce was nowhere to be seen. Third, he avoided house-to-house fighting. Fourth, he understood that only Baghdad mattered, destroying the Ba'athist ability to resist was his goal. He succeeded despite lacking the 3:1 force superiority suggested by military history, but that doesn't excuse the fact that he didn't have it.
Perhaps the only real change was the coalition's unwillingness to slaughter thousands upon thousands of city dwellers. Highly precise weaponry made that unnecessary. Yet, this is not a revolution in warfare -- it is merely common sense to avoid bombing non-combatants since they aren't a threat by definition.
Examining the record, though, the use of special forces changed little (Hitler parachuted his troops everywhere in May 1940), airpower remains untested since there was no aerial resistance, the navy had almost nothing to do except deliver troops and fly off carriers. Little new was learned, and to make broad and radical changes in US defense policy based on this war is to act on too little information.