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EDITORIAL: It's Time the United States Gave Up Its Aversion to 'Nation Building'
Thursday, July 25, 2002
(6:26 PM)
By James Holmes
The Athens Banner-Herald

To realign their attitude towards nation building, policy-makers ought to look back to the pre-World War II era, when the U.S. armed forces compiled an impressive record in Afghanistan-like "small wars" such as the Philippine War of 1899-1902 and the "banana wars" of the 1920s. How did they do it?

Could America win all the battles, yet lose the war on terrorism? In a word: Yes.

Last winter the U.S. armed forces swatted the Taliban regime out of existence in Afghanistan, and plans are in the works to extinguish Saddam Hussein's rule in Iraq. The Pentagon magnified its military effectiveness during the 1990s, while the Iraqi army fell into disrepair -- making another lopsided battlefield victory for the United States in the Persian Gulf virtually a foregone conclusion.

Still, the only results that really count in wartime are the political ones. And that's where the United States risks falling short in the anti-terrorist campaign.

Look at Afghanistan, where symptoms of this malady began to crop up in recent days. Vice President Abdul Qadir fell victim to a gunman, probably a henchman of one of the warlords who dominate much of the countryside. A U.S. AC-130 Spectre gunship -- basically a cargo plane horsed up with high-tech artillery and machine-guns -- inflicted an unknown number of civilian casualties in a friendly-fire incident. And efforts to train and equip an Afghan army have lagged badly.
(More: AthensNewspapers.com News Source)
2002 © The Athens Banner-Herald.

Dan