British soldiers had a tough war. Photograph: John Scone/Flickr

As the troops leave Iraq, some commentators are looking to the military High Command in London for answers to what they see as the failure of the British mission.

“I do not understand why not one US or British general has resigned over the war so far”, says Bob Shepherd, author of The Circuit and a former SAS soldier.

“The generals did a very bad job. They played political games and did not make decisions with the reality on the ground or their troops in mind”.

Richard North, author of Ministry of Defeat: The British War in Iraq 2003-2009, shares a similar sense of anger: “I would have liked them shot by the firing squad. They sent soldiers into the field with inadequate equipment and allowed them to be killed”.

Both Bob Shepherd and Richard North agree that the British military had tarnished its reputation as a result of its miss-handling of the counter-insurgency in Basra, and that similar mistakes are being repeated in Helmand, the region of Afghanistan where British troops are currently deployed.

“This is absolutely no disrespect to the soldiers and junior officers who had to fight for their own lives. This is due to the politicians and the generals. It will take decades before the British troops are seen again as among the best in the world”, said Bob Shepherd.

But speaking at a memorial service held in Basra for the British personnel who died in Iraq, John Hutton, the defence secretary said: "I think when the history is written of this campaign, they will say of the British military 'we did a superb job'."

According to Richard North, the cost of the war and the number of soldiers’ death could have been significantly lower had the High Command adapted its strategy and technology to the type of insurgency they faced.

“To fight an insurgency, the army needed to re-equip and restructure, but prior to 9/11 and the engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan, the army was already undergoing restructuring. They had planned a major re-equipment program in order to conform to new standards in conventional warfare. The decision not to devote time and energy to modify the plan was politically driven by Blair and the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon”, said Richard North.

Similar mistakes have undermined the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, critics say. Primarily, a lack of flexibility from those who make the decisions reduced the ability of British troops to adapt their strategy to the reality on the ground. While Americans learned from their mistakes, the British High Command seemed incapable of admitting error, leaving no room to learn from past failures.

Another mistake was to hurry the transition from securing the ground to rebuilding the country. As the troops do not have control of the region, the infrastructure put in place by the Provincial Reconstruction Team is used by the Taliban to their advantage after the troops have left.

Although President Obama re-focused the NATO strategy on eradicating the Taliban, it is, according to Bob Shepherd who has been visiting Afghanistan regularly, too late to avoid a civil war.

“We should simply pull out, because the troops are merely fighting for their survival now. If we stay we will need to have the stomach for going into a long fight. The Taliban have nothing to lose. They don’t have the window of opportunity we have as they cannot leave Iraq, and therefore they will fight, and are fighting to death”, he explains.

Bob Shepherd believes Afghanistan is on the brink of civil war and that Britain's continuing military commitment could see its troops fighting the Taliban for decades to come and could require as much as four times the same amount of men.