The necessity of nation building

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The other day Michael Totten linked to a fascinating “Washington Prism” interview with Christopher Hitchens. The question that caught Totten’s eye caught mine as well: When asked if a Democrat were president on 9/11 would the “American left” have a different take on Afghanistan and Iraq, Hitchens replied:

…in the mainstream of the Democratic and Republican parties, you would have seen an exact switch…The ones in the middle would have just done a switch, finding arguments to support or criticize the war. In fact, I remember that people in the Clinton administration spoke of an inevitable confrontation coming with Saddam. They dropped this idea only because it was a Republican president. That is simply disgraceful. It is likewise disgraceful how many Republicans ran as isolationists against [former Vice-President] Al Gore in the 2000 elections.

I’ve argued —frequently— that a Democratic president would have been at most a year behind the Bush Administration’s track in the War on Terror, but ultimately following the same offensive strategy. After lag time for the psycho-drama of left-wing angst, President Gore would be carrying the war to the politically dysfunctional Arab Muslim Middle East-- creating and sustaining political alternatives to tyranny and terror. And that means nation building. Republicans, Democrats, and independents who opposed democratic nation building in the post-Cold War era were wrong in their assessment of what it takes to insure U.S. security.

…

The truth is, after 9/11 we’re not engaged in nation building – we’re engaged in planet building (see here). I completely agree with Hitchens on this point. We should “consistently act” against internationalist totalitarian ideologies out of both principle and realism. “…f you don’t fight them now you fight them later… We can’t live on the same planet as them and I’m glad because I don’t want to.”

That’s precisely why I went back on active duty and served in Iraq.

Bay’s 1993 essay can be found here.

read the rest of this article by this soldier:

msnbc.msn.com/id/3395977/
 
Excuse my interferance, but regarding your source, C.H., Joe Sobran writes, as follows:

TURNCOAT: What’s with Christopher Hitchens? The
brilliant, bilious British expat, once a Trotskyist, has
abandoned the Left to support the Iraq war for reasons I
continue to find obscure. Despite his withering criticism
of Zionism (muted lately), the neocon press has happily
adopted him. I miss the good old days when he was a
commie

…now, back to Nation building.
 
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mdzialo1:
Excuse my interferance, but regarding your source, C.H., Joe Sobran writes, as follows:

TURNCOAT: What’s with Christopher Hitchens? The
brilliant, bilious British expat, once a Trotskyist, has
abandoned the Left to support the Iraq war for reasons I
continue to find obscure. Despite his withering criticism
of Zionism (muted lately), the neocon press has happily
adopted him. I miss the good old days when he was a
commie

…now, back to Nation building.
Click to expand...
My source was the soldier and author Austin Bay, nor Christopher Hitchens. If you are going to jump in brand new and criticize, the least you can do is actually read the article. I am not an apologist for Hitchens. What he has written on Iraq stands on its own merits. And yes, Hitchens is not a communist any more.
 
Hitchens is a JOKE and President SELECT Bush flip flopped on his Nation Building blather as well.
 
What I find most disturbing is the expression “planet building”. The concept of nation building as exercised by many authorities is to make eveyone like yourself. In America the native indians are no longer a nation unto themselves their “American” Indians, pressure is put on incoming nationalities, Irish, Jewish East European resulting in a hybrid who has the notions of his adopted nationality with a perverted idea of his origins.

The idea that one nation, America or not, should be the arbiter of right and wrong, who should be the soul judge of what constitutes a nation or planet fills me with dread.

The concept of Nation Building has shown itself in the past to be a short cut to disaster, it creates intolerance of any that don’t agree, it distorts mans ability to interact with his neighbour whilst accepting him as equal and it lends itself to a level of national self aggrandishment far beyond toleration by others. couple that with an overwhelming military power and you have a recipe for total world domination.

Is this what the author is advocating? Because if it is then I suspect America won’t only be fighting Islamic terrorists, and it would be very interesting to see the reaction of todays so called allies.
 
gilliam said:
As the principal occupying power in Iraq, the United States now has responsibility for sustained, long-term efforts to help the Iraqi people build a stable, pluralistic, democratic, and prosperous Iraq.

Statement on Moral Responsibilities for United States in Iraq
Bishop Wilton D. Gregory, June 22, 2004
Click to expand...

Wonderful sentiments but, what happens when, or if, the Iraqi people say they want to build their society on Sharia law without elections or the outward appearences of democracy?
 
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gilliam:
So far they haven’t said that. We will know soon enough though, see:

Beating the Deadline for the Iraqi Constitution
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Lousy dodge answer. If your going to build a world order on your own beliefs then you need to have the answers to some very basic questions, like, what are you going to do about those who don’t want your idea of a “perfect” world? What would you do about single undemocratically elected leaders? How would you treat such regimes? What do you consider to be “Democratic”?

In fact lets try a hypothetical question, how would you respond to a country where the leader has been elected by a small minority in secret without any reference to the general electorate? Where the population has no say at all in how the country is run, where a very small clique have total control of life and death over all its inhabitants and where democracy has never been exercised and where the constitution specifically deny’s the rights of the population to any form of democracy? In other words a political autocracy.

Do you think this scenario would be sufficient to insist on regime change and democratisation in accordance with the world order your article ascribes to?
 
Like it or not, Iraq is not a colony of the US. They are an independent nation. Their constitution is their own to build. Their mistakes will be their own to undo. Can we influence them at this stage? Certainly, and we are doing just that. Will we mandate what goes into their constitution. No.

We need to have a little faith in the good judgement of the Iraqi people. Who now have the opportunity to build a democracy, or at least a republic.
 
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