The 10 most common strategic blunders?

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his favorite
posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns. This
originally ran on September 2, 2009.

I'll read anything by Andrew Krepinevich, the fine strategic thinker who
bears a strong resemblance to Dwight Eisenhower circa 1939. Right now my subway
reading is a new essay he has done with Barry Watts titled "Regaining Strategic Competence."

I was especially intrigued by the list of 10 common strategic blunders they
attribute to business strategy expert Richard
Rumelt: 

1. Failure to recognize or take seriously the scarcity of resources.

2. Mistaking strategic goals for strategy.

3. Failure to recognize or state the strategic problem.

4. Choosing poor or unattainable strategic goals.

5. Not defining the strategic challenge competitively.

6. Making false presumptions about one's own competence or the likely causal
linkages between one's strategy and one's goals.

7. Insufficient focus on strategy due to such things as trying to satisfy too
many different stakeholders or bureaucratic processes.

8. Inaccurately determining one's areas of comparative advantage relative to
the opposition.

9. Failure to realize that few individuals possess the cognitive skills and
mindset to be competent strategists.

10. Failure to understand the adversary.

There is a whole book of military history to be written just finding good
illustrations of each of those mistakes. I think the United States was guilty of
No. 2 and No. 10 in Iraq from 2003 through 2006. I'd say the British tripped on
No. 3 during the American Revolution. I think Hitler committed No. 4 when he
tackled Russia. No. 10 is probably the most common error.

I'd be interested in other examples that you see.