Gian Gentile, a retired Army Colonel who served in Iraq, points out that Iraq was a failure in nation building and we could have exited Afghanistan in 2002 with pretty much the same result:
Yet, even with all this evidence that nation-building operations conducted at gunpoint don’t turn out well, some policymakers hold fast to the idea that these kinds of operations are crucial, arguing that we have achieved many of our goals in Iraq and Afghanistan. The purveyors of this notion are deeply attached to a narrative that emerged from analysis of the Vietnam War and took hold during this past decade of American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This story holds that nation-building wars in foreign lands can be won, as long as the hide-bound conventional armies that fight them then transform themselves, led by “savior generals,” into nation-builders. This is the view embraced by popular historian Victor Davis Hanson, who has argued that by the end of 2006, it appeared the war in Iraq was lost, only to be saved by the “maverick savior general, David Petraeus.”
Considering the current conditions in Iraq, it is hard to take Hanson seriously. But the narrative is important because it continues to be deployed to convince people that American wars in the troubled spots of the world can be made to work as long as the U.S. military tweaks its tactics under the tutelage of generals like Petraeus.
Gentile’s observations are pretty much conventional wisdom among the dirty hippies, but when a war veteran says them, too, at least a few more very serious people will listen.
(via Fallows)
raven
What about hippie war veterans?
dmsilev
Fixed for accuracy.
RAM
We simply don’t know how to do ‘nation building.’ If we did, Haiti would be a world economic powerhouse. Those of us who know our history really are doomed to watching others repeat it. Over and over and over again.
White Trash Liberal
Most of the nationbuilding was compensating locals for what we destroyed.
For example, we paid back due rent to dozens of Sunnis in Haditha. This rent was for Marines who commandeered homes and land to turn them into security positions. Homes wrecked, farmland turned into berms, and roads transformed into vehicle check points.
We also paid for the sinking of every last boat in the fishing town of Barwanah. There was intel in 2006 that insurgents would strap bombs to a boat to blow up a dam. So a Marine company came into town and punched holes in the bottom of every boat.
The lack of specificity in what, exactly, the surge and Sunni awakening consisted of, allows people like McCain and Hansen to dress it up in the fineries of patriotism.
Punchy
No…..no, they wont. That’s not conventional wisdom, so, by definition, it must be incorrect and libtardastic.
Baud
Reality is that we’ll be out of Afghanistan before any serious people feel the need to be introspective about this issue.
Suffern ACE
@Baud: well both Democratic and Republican administrations were involved, so the best we’ll get is an analysis that involves our party politics. Weak kneed Democrats without the willpower to follow through on the path to success laid by neglectful war mongering republicans more interested in turning a profit for their cronies than helping people.
Ultraviolet Thunder
Results weren’t the goal of staying in Afghanistan. The goal was Suck. On. This.
So in that sense it was a success.
Paul in KY
The Military Industrial complex needs wars to continue, to sell their high priced wares. It’s really as simple as that.
oldster
I blame this on Obama. Under his leadership, even the Army colonels have turned into hippy leftist dhimmi-loving Defeatocrats.
deep
But but but! The Koch Brothers have free oil now, right? So the goal was achieved! Making the 1% richer! Hurrah for military capitalism! If you can’t earn it honestly, then just take it! It’s the Ayn Rand way!
Poopyman
OT, but is it just me, or is http://www.noaa.gov offline?
Belafon
@Ultraviolet Thunder: We couldn’t have gone into Iraq had we not gone into Afghanistan.
OT: For you Doctor Who fans: Make sure you click on the double arrow on the street.
Linnaeus
I guess Victor Davis Hanson still thinks it’s the 4th century BCE and all that needs to happen is for Alexander the Great to sweep in, conquer the place, and declare peace.
Tone In DC
I am just shaking my head at the choice of words to describe high ranked commissioned officers.
Savior generals? Just a bit of messianic complex there? Just a tad?
Donut
Obama let himself be caught up in that misguided thinking about counterinsurgency and its effectiveness, and let the Pentagon have its way in Afghanistan. Though he rightly pulled the plug on that bullshit, a lot more death and destruction happened there on Obama’s watch. That we haven’t (and likely will not) get ultra-deep in the shit somewhere else (Iran, Syria) is a net positive, but I still think he made a huge error in escalating the Afghan war and overall historians will not judge him well for it.
FWIW, and directly related to foreign policy towards the Islamic world, even though he called it off in both Iraq and Afghanistan, I also think Obama may not have fully learned good lessons from those conflicts. Libya’s chickens are yet to come home to roost, and I think we have been on a slipperly slope there since taking out Ghadaffi. And Syria is still a possible big fucking problem waiting to swallow up more lives and treasure. I don’t like what’s starting to trickle out about what the CIA has been up to in Libya/Syria, and no, I’m not a knee-jerk Firebagger, I’m an intelligent liberal who (properly) doesn’t trust the CIA to be a good actor, ever, no matter who’s in charge at the White House.
Too much power is concentrated in the CIA’s hands, as usual, and Obama is letting it happen, if not actively encouraging it. It’s not good.
fka AWS
Popular is straining under the credulity it’s stretching in that sentence.
fidelio
@Linnaeus: Even Alexander couldn’t conquer Afghanistan without marrying into one of the local clans.
But I suppose it’s easier for a light-weight thinker like Hanson to dismiss her as a distracting hot babe than to consider the political advantages of that match at the time it was made.
I Heart Breitbartbees
@Poopyman: NOAA’s website is working fine for me. Are you using Internet Exploder? My last bowel movement was better than that browser.
Belafon
@Poopyman: It came up for me.
Poopyman
@I Heart Breitbartbees: Thanks. No, it’s Chrome, and still not finding it. This after a restart, too.
Paul in KY
@fidelio: Tamerlane was basically a local & I think he probably made strategic marriages among the tribes.
Chris
And the thing that’ll go unsaid in all our memories of the war, where people will focus solely on the military genius of THE SURGE! – is that the only reason things started getting better in 2006 is that enough of the Sunni militias started jumping ship and joining our side (for a fee). In the entire Iraq War, the only successful strategy we could come up with was paying our enemies not to shoot us.
@Tone In DC:
Yes, but a pretty accurate description of the way the popular narrative treated Petraeus.
jayjaybear
The proper answer to this is “Iraq? What’s that?”, because that nation has all but ceased to exist lo these many years now, as far as American “news” outlets are concerned.
I Heart Breitbartbees
@Donut: I agree with you on Libya. I get the sense President Obama is going to be smart enough to largely keep us out of Syria and Egypt, correctly seeing those as no-win situations. Unlike his immediate predecessor, he’s smart enough to know when he has made a mistake and how to avoid repeating it, mostly.
We should limit our involvement there and elsewhere to humanitarian aid. The locals are almost always happier to see foodstuffs and building supplies than Marines and rifles. Even though they’re insane for their glibertarian beliefs, Trey Parker and Matt Stone were right in one respect. Team America: World Police indeed. Also, too: puppet love scene? Really? They’re completely barmy.
Belafon
@Donut:
So you don’t really know what’s going to happen in either of them, other than what is currently happening, and yet you think Obama’s screwed them up even though we’ve not really done much militarily in either. I personally think Egypt ranks way higher than either of these two countries.
I Heart Breitbartbees
@Poopyman: I’m using Chromium on a Linux box, and it’s working fine. Have you tried Firefux?
Scott S.
@fka AWS: Popular with morons and psychopaths. Unknown by anyone else.
Poopyman
@fka AWS: “Popular” can also mean “not academic”, aka “not serious”, aka “don’t trust what this guy’s peddling”. I’ll take Door #3.
Poopyman
@I Heart Breitbartbees: Firefux is fuxxed, also too. Quite mysterious. I think Obama doesn’t want me to know what the weather is.
kednedub
@raven: what Raven said!
cvstoner
If their goal was perpetuation of the terrorist incubators of the world used to justify the national security state and endless militarism, then they have indeed succeeded beyond their wildest imaginations.
Felonius Monk
Isn’t this Halliburton-speak for “Let’s steal their oil”?
Yatsuno
@Belafon: Spread some of that on Book of Faces. I like the prices at the café too. Not bad for downtown London really.
Suffern ACE
@fidelio: maybe we need to write that into our constitution. We can occupy another power only if the president is willing to take a local spouse.
Soonergrunt
The main issue I take with this is that everything COL Gentile said can be addressed by the simple factual statement “when the occupying power has the political and economic will to do so, as in post-occupation Germany and Japan and a couple of other places.”
But since democracies tend to suck at having the political will to do anything hard for any appreciable length of time, particularly if that hard thing involves getting their people killed, it’s all academic and COL Gentile is correct.
I will now return to my corner with you all having read an op-ed, promoting yourselves to Colonels and Generals.
Mike in NC
Cheney fan Victor Dickhead Hanson? The guy who’s been 100% wrong on everything for the past decade?
He probably fantasizes about being President Cruz’s Secretary of State.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Iraq would be a thriving democracy if Obama didn’t abandon it. /sarcasm
Chris
From the LA Times article;
It’s odd that he spends so little time on those examples, since they both involved some serious attempts at nation-building. (The Civil War could seriously back up his case, while World War Two is about the only instance I can think of that could contradict it).
Botsplainer
The only true example of culture-flipping nation building is Japan – an imposed constitution with democratic institutions, guaranteeing that the new powers that be get invested in a new status quo, and the long lead-in time to a withdrawal of the occupation made that status quo powerful.
Even when I was a wingnut, I was flummoxed by the Bush failure on that.
raven
@Soonergrunt: let em have it sarge!
jon
@RAM:
We did fine in Japan and Germany. In Japan we took over, wrote their constitution, forced them to accept it, and SURPRISE! it’s still working well for them. Germany was a bit more complicated, but we definitely made more of an ally than an enemy in our time there. The problem in Iraq was that it was about controlling the oil. We could have given them a constitution written over a weekend by an Army major. Hell, we could have given them a constitution where the United States of America was crossed out at the top. And the people of Iraq would have welcomed their new freedoms. Instead, our military was controlled by oil barons and oligarchs who didn’t give a shit about religious rights or freedom. Whenever I hear about Sharia Law, remember that the Republicans gave it to Iraq. Read their constitution. We allowed that. Total betrayal of religious freedom. Why? Because only the oil mattered. Not women’s rights, certainly. Too much to ask from that group of religious whackos (I’m referring to Americans.)
I’ll believe we can’t do nation building when Japan gets another empire or Germans march into Russia. Until then, Iraq and Afghanistan are just more examples of how we lost our way by doing things on the cheap as expensively as possible. That’s the new American Way, and it sucks. Thank you, efficiency engineers! Thank you, pie chart warriors! Thank you, MBAs!
low-tech cyclist
Can even the Villagers and VSPs of Washington, D.C. still buy into the notion that all it would take is a little bit of tweaking to turn our military into successful counterinsurgency operators? Good Lord.
Haven’t any of these loons ever seen The Music Man? Because the problem when we get involved in these faraway lands is simple: we don’t know the territory!
We don’t speak the language, we aren’t familiar with the local rivalries and divisions (and the best our decision-makers will ever internalize is a very, very watered-down Cliff’s Notes version), and most importantly, we just aren’t ready to become a permanent player there.
So we wind up mucking around in the dark, doing ineffectual or outright harmful things, and the locals know that they can outwait us, so the payoff for cooperating with us won’t be a lasting one. There’s just no way we can do counterinsurgency right. The only people who can are the ones who live there.
Booger
So, the shorter version is “Best & Brightest 2.0?”
Villago Delenda Est
Victor Davis Hansen is one of those Burkean assholes who is entranced by the “sumblimity” of war, yet somehow manages to avoid serving in one.
Becasue to actually be in one ruins the “sublimity” of it, you know.
Hansen and those like him should be put to slow deaths.
tybee
@Poopyman:
comcast seems to be having issues so if that’s your ISP…
Belafon
@low-tech cyclist: Making the military into nation builders is like trying to take the Baltimore Ravens and turning them into a baseball team. “They’re athletes, they’ll figure it out.”
As an optimist, I tend to think we’re a reluctant empire, but there are some people who seem to think we’re wimps because we don’t want to go all the way.
Gin & Tonic
@Poopyman: Depends on who your ISP is, as I’ve seen scattered reports that .gov is having problems with DNSSec validation.
Villago Delenda Est
@Felonius Monk:
I beg your pardon. The sand ni*CLANGS* are living on top of OUR oil. It was never theirs…they just imagined it was theirs.
Let’s see…weapons dumps…not important. Antiquities…not important. Water works…not important.
Oil ministry…VERY important.
The Moar You Know
Turns out that’s not really the case. The war veteran suddenly becomes a filthy unwashed hippie.
Villago Delenda Est
@Tone In DC:
No one who has served will EVER think of a general officer as a “savior”. Particularly if they were anywhere close to one.
One of the things I learned in the military is that there are serious fuckups at every echelon of the chain of command. That does not exclude the White House by any means.
cleek
@Poopyman:
http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ can be handy in these situations
Villago Delenda Est
@Poopyman:
Works for me…Chrome running on Win 7.
Soonergrunt
And before you all jump on the “soonergrunt’s a war monger ZOMG!” bandwagon, go and actually READ what COL Gentile wrote–
Nowhere did he offer an alternative (he never has) to fighting wars that the nation tasks the military to fight which don’t look like giant Division-level set piece battles on open plains. His writings have always been critiques of what he has seen as “mistaking effects for effectiveness.”
He doesn’t address the fact that while the Taliban were defeated on the field in 2002, there was no functioning government in Afghanistan, and the Taliban were still very capable of taking the country back after we would have left, had we done what he advocated. Which quite likely would have involved re-invading in 2005. Since that can’t be measured (effects vs effectiveness) he doesn’t address it.
And lastly, COL Gentile doesn’t say what quite a lot of you seem to think he’s saying here–he’s not arguing against American military action in the world, as Andrew Bacevitch does, but rather he argues that the US military is now concentrating excessively on counterinsurgency, to the detriment of its capacity to fight conventional wars.
Poopyman
@tybee: Yay! That’s the conclusion I was coming to.
Poopyman
@Gin & Tonic: Quite possibly the cause, since attempts at other .gov sites gave the same result.
NOAA, NASA, and others are working fine at the moment, though.
raven
@The Moar You Know: You rang?
Suffern ACE
@Soonergrunt: Be careful with that idea of “Will.” We were in Iraq, Vietnam and Afghanistan a long time. What exactly was the “will” that would have gotten us through? The “Will to do it” is just a swipe at democracy in disguise and makes democracy the “stab in the back” agent in the story of how we failed our good soldiers and leaders. It lets our leaders off the hook.
raven
@Soonergrunt:
You ain’t got a friend on your left
You ain’t got a friend on your right. . .
Poopyman
@Soonergrunt:
Good grief! That’s not even fighting “the last war”. When does he expect some country to take on the US in a head on symmetrical war? I can think of Korea, and that’s about it. China is too entwined economically with the rest of the world, especially the US, and will be happy keeping to the cyber realm for the foreseeable future.
Good thing this guy is retired.
Gin & Tonic
@Poopyman: It appears that Comcast has DNSSec problems with .gov domains fairly often, judging by a quick Gsearch.
Villago Delenda Est
@Suffern ACE:
Good point.
Never forget that “Triumph of the Will” was a celebration of dictatorship.
Soonergrunt
@Suffern ACE: No, it isn’t. To say afterwards “we were stabbed in the back!” is one (wrong, and almost always right-wing) thing. To acknowledge the structural and philosophical limitations on the nation’s war-making capacity is what I could consider smart Soldiering. When I say that the nation didn’t have the political will to spend the next two decades in Iraq and Afghanistan, I am NOT saying that as if it is a bad thing. The nations that tend to have the political will to do that kind of thing are almost always authoritarian regimes, and you’ve never read anything by me that praised that particular form of governance. Even then, it doesn’t always work. The Soviet politburo wasn’t exactly famous for giving a shit about what the opinion on the streets of Moscow was, but Afghanistan isn’t a prosperous communist nation, now is it?
Bubblegum Tate
I’m up for anything that knocks that self-important dipshit VDH down a few pegs.
Soonergrunt
@Poopyman: COL Gentile is not retired. He’s an active duty officer currently serving as a Professor of History at West Point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gian_gentile
While I believe that COL Gentile is honest about his critique, don’t forget that different parts of the Army fight over a limited budget (that’s about to get a LOT more limited) and will do everything they can to see their preferred doctrine (and the budget share attendant) ascendant. COL Gentile is an Armor branch officer. A Tanker. COIN is a Light Infantry-heavy doctrine.
Felonius Monk
@Villago Delenda Est: Of course, this has no relationship to the idea put forth decades ago that communism must be stopped in its tracks in Vietnam where Standard Oil had found that some of the richest oil fields in the world existed. Perhaps aptly phrased as “We must save the Vietnamese people from the evils of communism” which again I think is oil industry-speak for “Let’s steal their oil”.
And sure enough, we are now out there pumping oil. But I doubt that the people of Vietnam are getting a single nickel from it. But, hey, it was cheap. It only cost 50,000+ American lives, not to mention the countless injured and maimed.
Chris
@Soonergrunt:
It’s not just that having the political and economic will can be a bad thing. It’s also that sometimes the will simply isn’t enough, and it’s dangerous to simplify things to the point where whether we can do it simply depends on political will. (That’s not even lessons of war, just life). That’s the mindset that made the Germans think they could conquer Russia, and the Chinese think they could reach prosperity by smelting iron in their back yards.
I agree that he’s oversimplifying when he says that nation-building is never possible, but I doubt if it’s as simple as “well it would be if we only had the will to get it done” either.
srv
In Japan, we literally had their god on our side. So if you’re looking for exceptions to the rule, the first requirements are:
1) Nation has a previous history with republic/democratic/western systems – or –
2) You own their god
3) There are no other exceptions
Soonergrunt
@Chris: That’s pretty much what I said. I’ll extend and say that having the political will to do a thing is only the beginning (the Apollo program comes to mind immediately). It’s a necessary but not sufficient condition for many things.
I for one am glad that we do not have the will to do multi-decade or multi-century occupations of other countries. We’re not Europeans, after all.
Chris
@Soonergrunt:
In that case I agree, then.
The Moar You Know
@Villago Delenda Est: The Comanche had all kinds of awesome ways for killing people horribly and slowly. For this guy, I’m thinking of how they used to nail people upside-down to trees through their Achilles tendons and then shovel live coals underneath them. Slow-roasted.
Helmut Monotreme
@Villago Delenda Est: IIRC VDH also points to ‘classical’ solutions employed by Romans and Greeks to end insurgencies as an example of how Afghanistan could be pacified. From his perspective, our unwillingness to commit genocide and/or break up every tribal group in the area by breaking up towns and families and relocating them at random just shows how weak the US has become.
fidelio
@Botsplainer: Even then, Japan was working on becoming a democratic constitutional monarchy before the militarists undermined these efforts during the first ten years of Hirohito’s reign.
I think it’s worth considering that in both Germany and Japan after World War II there was a fortunate combination of circumstances for the occupiers, so to speak–democratically-inclined survivors who’d been displaced by the militarist/fascist factions (who were either dead or discredited by the time of the surrender) that prosecuted the war, and a population that was in no shape to argue much with anyone who was providing food and able to control public order. In Germany the Western powers also had the advantage of being able to point to the Soviet-controlled sector and saying “We could be ever so much worse, you know.” Neither place was divided between factions who’d been held back from tearing each other apart only by the presence of the displaced regime, either–the collapse of Yugoslavia after Tito might have been a better model to consider in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Allied powers were also in a position to keep troops in place for a very long time–the effective end of the Occupation in Japan was 1953, and in Germany 1955, with the occupation of Berlin technically continuing until 1990. Both countries were in far worse shape than Iraq was, even after over a decade of the UN embargo
Robert Sneddon
@Soonergrunt: President Monroe declared over a century ago that the Western hemisphere belonged to the United States. After that Hawa’ii and assorted other Pacific possessions were “acquired” and never let go of. Panama only escaped the clutches of the US recently as the empire retreated, and how long was the US the owner of the Philippines, again? This was ofter the acquisition of the Black Hills, an attempt to annex Canada back in the early 1800s, “Fifty-four forty or Fight!” a bit later followed by the Fenian problem in the 1860s.
The US still has delusions of ownership of places like Cuba and its military involvement in central America over the past few decades has not covered it in glory in terms of propagation of democracy and human rights. But you’re not Europeans, right enough. They don’t think that big.
Mnemosyne
@Robert Sneddon:
I don’t think Soonergrunt is saying that the US didn’t have imperial ambitions. I think he’s saying that we weren’t very good at it, so we weren’t able to, say, occupy and dominate India or the Caribbean for a hundred years like the British did.
Soonergrunt
@Robert Sneddon: “They don’t think that big.”
Oh, so the whole “The sun never sets on the British Empire” thing for a several hundred years was just pamphleteering for great unwashed? It was all Potemkin villages that didn’t amount to much beyond Blighty was it?
The US owes its very existence as it currently exists to British empire-building. See also Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Egypt, Kenya, and the still operating colonial possessions of Gibralter, Turks and Caicos, Montserrat, Bermuda, Falklands Islands, Sandwich Islands, and so on. And on. And on. And on.
And I’m not even talking about French colonial holdings in Asia, Africa, and the middle east. Or the Dutch East Indies.
While we’re on the subject, Iraq and Afghanistan both suffered under the tender embrace of British colonialism for decades, or did you think that all those straight lines on the maps just happened by magic?
Jeremy
I don’t see how you can look at Libya as an issue ( even if you didn’t support the NATO coalition effort). Yes they have having some issues but they are minor in comparison to what is going on in Egypt and Syria. I don’t see Libya as a problem.
Ted & Hellen
Gee, ya think?
I could have told these murderous motherfuckers this very fact back in 2002 myself, but no one called.
This douchebag needs to ride one of Distenda’s tumbrels along with most of the military brass, Bush, Cheney, and Look Forward Not Back And Continue Illegal/Useless Wars As Long As I Can Get Away With It Obama.
Hateful, selfish, soulless bastards.
Another Holocene Human
@Poopyman: Hey, there is an alternative–just try weather.gov. Does that work for you?
Ted & Hellen
@Bubblegum Tate:
Yes, because he’s the real monster. Not the dude in the WH who has kept the Iraq/Afghanistan wars for Freedom and Democracy going an extra five years, longer than the entirety of U.S. involvement in WW II.
I know: It’s all so complicated! Republicans are mean!
Another Holocene Human
@Botsplainer: And that’s probably overstating American influence on Japan.
They already had a functional government and shared sense of identity as a nation (once the US freed their occupied territories). The Diet dates to the late 19th century and was reformed under the occupation, not created from scratch.
Japan has taken a great deal of US influence, especially cultural influence after the war, but had been influenced much more heavily by Britain and Germany/Prussia, imitating their dress, navy, school system … even reviving an interest in their religious beliefs, as the Shogunate had suppressed Christianity; during the Meiji period it returns in a limited way.
Think about countries like Germany after WWII or Czechoslovakia after the end of Russian occupation. Investments helped prevent another Weimar-style governmental implosion so the conquerors had learned the right lessons… Czechoslovakia and Slovenia invested cautiously, unlike Russia, after the end of Communism and have greater stability as a result. I would say Iraq is more like Chechnya or Bosnia, where a regime that favored one ethnic group has just ended and now the other group wishes to get revenge, and the economy is too fucked for people to swallow that shit and get over it.
And if you want proof that the US sucks at nation-building, just look at the former states in rebellion. After 150 years they STILL have 3rd world economies and gini indexes to make a sociologist cry; there has been some success with massive investment like the TVA but these investments have been utterly sporadic; likewise, protecting the rights of minorities in these regions has been a sporadic and often completely failed endeavor; and an underclass persists to this day.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@raven: What about hippie war veterans?
Hippie = any war vet who says this.
Wasn’t the Powell Doctrine basically reverse physiology against the whole nation building at gun point and was denounced by the Serious People as “reality based”?
Another Holocene Human
@Another Holocene Human: And Poles and Czechs did get revenge on Germans post WWII but in a controlled way–the Allies pretty much condoned and supervised mass resettlement of peoples, totally a violation of human rights but seemingly effective it seems even 70 years later. Again, without investment in Germany making them not obsess about everything they lost (like post WWI obsessing about losing Elsatz-Lothringen to the French) who’s to say that relocation would not have become a potent casus belli? But as it was, it probably prevented more immediate inter-ethnic violence.
Another Holocene Human
@jon: We did fine in Japan and Germany. In Japan we took over, wrote their constitution, forced them to accept it, and SURPRISE! it’s still working well for them.
But Japan didn’t have a guerilla war playing out between Kansai and Kantou and a proxy war going on in the Diet. So not really the same thing.
jamick6000
He’s saying that using the army for “nation building” is a waste and a terrible idea. He doesn’t say that counterinsurgency is a waste.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Paul in KY: The Military Industrial complex needs wars to continue, to sell their high priced wares. It’s really as simple as that.
Speaking as a former employe that complex it’s the reverse – in some counter insurgency all the money gets spent on MREs and bullets, none it goes to the pricey stuff the investor class likes such as aircraft carriers and fighter jets. What the military industrial complex is itching for is another cold war with another major power,like say China.
Another Holocene Human
When we’re congratulating ourselves about Japan, what about China? China’s communists and nationalists formed an alliance of necessity to repel the Japanese. Once that ended, US influence was utterly unable to put the Nationalists over the top, and oh yeah we had committed resources to try to keep the Communists out of power there. The Nationalist leadership ended up on the run, fleeing to Taiwan. Btw they were shit at democracy, their only real accomplishment being setting the stage for real democracy in Taiwan 50 years later.
Iraq is like China except that we are both the foreign devils (Nanking, Abu Ghraib) AND the interfering Romulans* (backing factions in a civil war) AND the Russians attempting to provide self-serving “advice”.
*see http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Klingon_Civil_War – I guess it was a Vietnam metaphor (or a Saddam Hussein metaphor?) but works here as well
Chris
@Another Holocene Human:
This subject came up here a year ago. My theory then was that “nation building” worked in Germany because we stomped the ever-living shit out of Nazi ideology but at the same time invested enough in economic rebuilding and, more generally, the future, that the average German had reason to believe in the new Germany. Whereas reconstruction in the South was the opposite – a mismanaged postwar reconstruction followed by the glories of Industrial Age exploitation (Standard Oil was basically running Louisiana by the time of the Great Depression, for example), but we left them their Lost Cause ideology as a consolation prize and, since it was all they had, they clung to it like there was no tomorrow.
Chris
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
And Bush was all set to give it to them when he came into office, but 9/11 forced him to rearrange his plans some.
Another Holocene Human
@fidelio: Thank you.
It occurs to me that if the GWB admin had not been so focused on stealing everything in Iraq that wasn’t nailed down and had given construction contracts to local Iraqis, soaking up the unemployed meaning less angry idle people to blow shit up, and had the US been able to provide better security than they did, because there absolutely WERE democracy-minded Iraqis trying to improve things right after Hussein’s regime fell–so of course they were targeted by insurgents to further their glorious revolution–things might have turned out differently.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne: We’re excellent at breaking things, though. See: Haiti, Democratic Republic of.
Another Holocene Human
@Chris: I would agree–Wirtschaftswunder in the cultural record is a sort of distraction from the ongoing psychic pain of loss and defeat. Yes there was an opposition in Germany but what many don’t realize is that they flocked to the East and ended up either adapting themselves to the Stalinist reality by retreating into polemic and half-fantasy or had to flee again, this time leaving Germany for good. In the West the Allies were pretty much forced to leave ex-Nazis in power–so much for de-Nazification! That is probably part of the reason they were in no hurry to leave… nobody liked the idea of going through that shit again so soon after the first one.
I wonder to what degree Germany was disarmed and whether that matters in today’s era of IEDs.
Reconstruction was botched by a hasty pullout, which allowed the counter-insurgency–KKK terrorists–to seize back power through violence as they assuredly lacked the numbers. The economic side of it is interesting. I didn’t know that about Standard Oil. I was in NOLA a couple of months ago and they had a picture of an anthropomorphized shrimp next to an oil derrick to advertise the “Oil and Shrimp Festival” or maybe that was Petroleum, either way, not exactly appetizing!
Visceral
War Nerd (which BJ introduced me to) has lots to say on insurgency/counter-insurgency. Long story short, it’s a waste because when the people aren’t already on your side and only cooperate with the insurgents out of fear, CI boils down to a duel between bands of terrorists, with the people as the terrain being fought over. “Winning hearts and minds” is an ugly, ugly business whether you’re the homegrown guerrilla or the imperial occupier, precisely because while schools and hospitals are expensive, vulnerable to attack, and pay off only on the long term, death squads are cheap, disposable, and very effective right now.
fidelio
@Another Holocene Human: After World War II Germany was disarmed as much as humanly possible, with significant restrictions on the rearmament process, which produced significant infighting among the Allies.
From 1946 or so until 1951, there were no German armed forces of any kind in the western portion; in 1951, an armed border guard was permitted. In West Germany, the Bundeswher was formed in 1955, with significant restrictions on when and where they could be deployed. East Germany’s history was not significantly different.
There was a significant effort made to locate, secure, and destroy weapons and ordnance after World War II, and while there was an attempt at an insurgency made by some die-hard Nazis, it collapsed between the heavy hand of the occupying forces and the near-total lack of support from the population, who were starving, exhausted, and generally terrified. German munitions and weapon manufacturers were diverted to other areas of production–the history of Krupp is typical.
The ieda of leaving any ammunition or weapons dumps unguarded and undestroyed, as happened in Iraq, would have been considered rank incomptence in World War II. But then, they weren’t trying to do that war with as few ground troops as they could get away with, either. Neither Knox, Forrestal, or SImpson in the US would have tried to suggest such a thing, and neither would their counterparts in the other Allied governments. France and the Soviet Union were particularly not interested in being invaded and occupied again, and the British were not interested in another go-round in twenty or thirty years either, let alone a well-armed and organized insurgency.
The Frnech and Soviets, having produced insurgencies, had some idea of what it took to form and maintain them as well, instead of operating on a purely theoretical model.
It is worth noting that the occupation of both post-World War II Europe and Japan was not, in general, run for the benefit of the western powers’ military industrial complex, and it’s worth noting that while the Soviets were not shy about stripping the occupied territories of anything they thought they could use, they were also a lot more willing to maintain a very heavy-handed occupation. The western powers were, in general, more concerned with producing a self-sufficient Germany (and Austria) which would result in a politically stable state (or states, if you count Austria). As the Cold War progressed, Germany’s potential as a front-line defense against the Soviets was not ignored, of course.
Chris
@Another Holocene Human:
I still need to read a lot more about America between the Civil War and the Great Depression, but my understanding is that the robber barons from the cities up North (the new rulers of the country) saw the South as a prize wide open for exploitation (along with the rest of the country), and the local elites for the most part were happy to go along with it. Louisiana I know mostly because of what I’ve read about Huey Long, and as I recall the local machine Long overthrew was basically a joint venture between Standard Oil and the local Confederatish elites.
@fidelio:
And from what I understand of that… ex-Nazis had much more attractive options than insurgency, namely, either run away to South America or elsewhere in the third world (for the really high profile ones who weren’t going to escape justice) or stay in West Germany and go to work for the new authorities (and we were often happy to indulge them). The latter is an ugly choice but it is one way of disarming a potential insurgency… as we relearned in 2006/2007 when we started taking former Sunni insurgent groups onto our side. Those who actually stayed and did the Werwolf insurgency were the die-hard fanatics.
Paul in KY
@The Moar You Know: Iroquois also were pretty good at that. Read some nasty accounts from mid 17th century.
Paul in KY
@Another Holocene Human: If they hadn’t been ‘mass relocated’, they probably would have been executed/murdered.
Paul in KY
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Alot of high priced stuff was/is used in Iraq and Afganistan.
Regnad Kcin
@Poopyman: May I also suggest http://www.wundergound.com and http://www.predictwind.com as decent alternatives to NOAA…?
Tone In DC
@Villago Delenda Est:
As a civilian, I’m don’t perceive what the troops and vets do. I just hope the military brass does not believe their own bullshit.
Tone In DC
Can’t type worth a damn today.
sdhays
@srv: Something that seems to always be left out when talking about nation building after WWII is the Soviet boogeyman. It’s a lot easier to get people to be quiet and do things your way when the other option is clearly much worse.
Visceral
@Chris: From what I heard, it was simply a matter of there being too many people guilty of association for the Allies to blacklist them all, especially the middle management/NCO types who’d been running Germany for the last 10, 20, 30 years. You could say they learned Versailles’ lesson about not kicking people when they’re down, but more importantly they could see the Cold War brewing, so wanted to build Germany (and Japan) up and fast, not turn them into weak colonies.
Frankensteinbeck
We will never know if nation building in Afghanistan or Iraq would have worked. Bush abandoned Afghanistan immediately to launch his sexier war to take down Saddam Hussein, and Iraq was ground zero of ‘make our own reality’ thinking. The administration ordered the Pentagon to scrap their extensive rebuilding plans, because real men made things up as they go along.
After seven years, there’s no unscrewing that pooch.
Also, even if nation building might have worked in Iraq, we had no business being there anyway. Bush and Cheney didn’t even get what they want. Bush isn’t being remembered as a mighty war hero, and Cheney’s plan for the rest of the Middle East to throw down their arms and beg to be American puppets turned out to be as stupid as it sounds.
Chris
@Visceral:
That, plus those of them that had skills we needed or thought we might need. Werner Von Braun with his knowledge of rockets. Reinhard Gehlen with his (supposed) intelligence contacts and expertise from Eastern Europe. Hubertus Strughold and his research on the effects of altitude and space travel on the human body. Etc, etc, etc.
Donut
@Belafon:
First: Where in the in the fuck did I say Obama had screwed up either Syria or Libya? That’s a lot fucking different than saying the chickens have not yet come home to roost.
What I said about Libya at the time that we got deeply involved (and if you think that was a light footprint, I strongly disagree), was that, as with every other military adventure we engage in, there are significant unintended consequences, many of which Obama himself will not have to deal with while in office.
The cause and effect of toppling a base of power in a foreign country is not always apparent immediately, as anyone with a basic grasp of historical studies can tell you.
I thank you in advance for shutting the fuck up about what I think, unless it is obviously stated. Feel free to search the comment archives for what I said back then. To paraphrase a number of posts I made, I said it was folly to think we’d be able to drop some bombs, eliminate the Ghaddafi dictatorship and think we would be done with it.
In case you have not noticed, we have had a few problems with Libya in the last several months, which is exactly the kind of unexpected event I was rambling on and on about back then.
I am a strong supporter of the president, flaws and all, but the CIA cloak and dagger shit will always make me uncomfortable, to say the least; and Obama has not let off the gas on that shit. If one thinks the Obama-era CIA is kindler and gentler than in the past, solely because it is Obama and he is trusted where a Bush or a Reagan is not, then one is kidding oneself, to say the least.
It ain’t all sunshine and flowers and it ain’t all a-ok because Obama is from my side of the American political divide.
Robert Sneddon
@Soonergrunt: So when does the US hand Hawa’ii back to its native population? When do the marines pull out of Guantanamo Bay and hand that back to the Cubans as they’ve been asking since the 60s? How about closing the US airbase in Okinawa, a subject of strife with the local Japanese population for decades? No?
As for the relics of Empire, in some cases the US military objected when we tried to give back some bits to the locals — the British Indian Ocean Territories, for example. Take a look on Google maps sometime, search for the island of Diego Garcia and zoom in on the unsinkable aircraft carrier^W^W^Wairfield there. The apron is lined with B-1s and B-52s which as far as I know are only flown by the USAF. Democracy and freedom for others is good but a long runway close to the Middle East is worth the sacrifice.
Mnemosyne
@Robert Sneddon:
Uh, Hawai’i is an actual US state. You may have been misled by all of the birthers whining about President Obama purportedly not being a US citizen, but it is an actual part of the United States and has been since 1959. You may as well ask when we’re going to hand Texas or California back to their native populations — after all, they both declared themselves republics back in the day.
I understand the other two examples since they’re examples of us holding onto land inside other sovereign nations that have their own governments, but the Hawai’i example is just … weird.
El Cid
I thought THE SURGE was the awesomest thing of anything ever and it fixed everything in Iraq.