The Obama Administration is bruiting it about that the president is impatient with the slow pace of “nation-building” in Afghanistan, reports the New York Times. Nine months (Obama’s White House tenure)–or, hey, call it even eight years (since the bombing began)–has not been enough time to lessen corruption, establish a viable government and court system, or train the feckless police force.
“The president is not satisfied on any of this,” said a senior administration official.
So they really are that ignorant–i.e., as ignorant as the Bush nation-builders. The culture of a non-self-serving civil service, as much as we rightly deride bureaucratic bloat, is a triumph of civilization that takes centuries to evolve. Ditto the practice of due process of law. Of course, nation-building in Afghanistan is no more unlikely a foreign policy accomplishment than ending poverty in Africa. Declare one undoable and a proper application of logic would bring the whole naive edifice down. But maybe one step at a time is all one can hope for.
It’s impossible to build a nation out of a country that consists of various squabbling tribes determined (apparently) to continue living in primitive conditions. Tribal culture is not only inimical to progress, it negates the very idea of nationhood.
Michael Yon has been sounding the tocsin on Afghanistan for, well, years. Only the Americans and the Brits have any stomach for the fight–and they’ve been denied even the basic tools (e.g., helos) for success. According to Yon, the Afghans want nothing to do with our troops (so much for “counter-insurgency strategy”). I’m beginning to think George Will is right: conduct the war from afar with smart bombs and predators.
People keep saying “this is not Vietnam.” It’s not. It’s worse.
Heather, Dubya and Obama share the (obviously glaringly false) assumption that human nature is infinitely mutable, that everyone has a strong inner yearning to live in a free society, and that America can lead the world on the path toward freedom, democracy, and honest, clean government.
If everyone were like the Finns (shy and not coincidentally the least corrupt country in the world) then there’d be no need for American nation building.
The Middle East seems endless stuck in a choice between the corrupt and the fanatic in large part because of the notion that the product of centuries of institutional development can be “parachuted” in. Build these things the way they were built originally in the West, from existing authority structures within the societies.