THE FOLLY OF NATION BUILDING

 by Blackfox

I wrote this a few years ago. But it seems just as relevant today.

Nation Building in Iraq and Afghanistan

Note: Below is the group that leads the Neo-Conservatives.

Robert Kagan  is an American neoconservative scholar. He is a leading advocate of liberal interventionism.

A co-founder of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century. Kagan has been a foreign policy adviser to U.S. Republican presidential candidates as well as Democratic administrations via the Foreign Affairs Policy Board.

His brother Frederick is a military historian and author. 

Kagan is married to American diplomat Victoria Nuland, who previously served as deputy national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney and assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs in the Obama administration.

*Other prominent neoconservatives in the George W. Bush administration included Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle, Paul Bremer, and Douglas Feith.

All endeavors are composed of two parts: means and ends. In discussing the Middle East, if one were to ask: "By what means and to what ends are we engaging there?", you couldn't get a definitive answer from either the foreign policy establishment or any political leaders.

Stripped of rationalising verbiage, the current missions are to supplant evil with goodness. The West, in particular, America, wants to start a social re-construction in the middle east by replacing the region's growing theocratic fascism with democracy. Back in 2003, George Bush, under the guiding hands of the Neo-Cons (read: Virginia Nuland, her husband Robert Kagan, her brother-in-Law Frederick Kagan, and *others), thought he would plant the seeds of a social revolution in Iraq and Afghanistan. So enarmoured was he in this undertaking that in his second inaugural address, he said, with almost missionary zeal: “Eventually, the call of freedom comes to every mind and every soul. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul.”

To every one's chagrin, though, the cultural soil has proven to be not only hard pan but contaminated with the poison of centuries of old hatreds and prejudices. So toxic is the culture that new ideas do not grow there; new ideas cannot grow there. Islamist values couple with and exacerbate murderous internecine feuds that render the middle east into an intellectually barren mindscape and has produced a society that could be fairly described as being composed of "a little people, a silly people - greedy, barbarous, and cruel..."

One accepts that Islamic theocratic fascism is evil, but its opposite is not democracy. Democracy is not goodness; it is, at best, a means to an end. Democracy, even in America, is subordinate to morality. That's why Americans have a Bill of Rights which limits the powers of a democratically elected government. Islam tolerates no dissent. Under Sharia law there cannot be nor will there ever be, a bill of rights.

Under Sharia law, both individuals and democratically elected governments are subordinate to an Islamic theocracy, in all matters. In my opinion, a democratic style of government will not be the bulwark against theocratic despotism that Americans hope it will be.

The people of the middle east are not going to stop being Muslims. The installation of democracy to counter an Islamic theocracy is nothing more than a masturbatory fantasy of those Kantian inspired "peace through democracy" theorists: the liberal internationalists.

As a wartime rationale, replacing evil with goodness is a naive idealism. But if this is not a defensible rationale for war then what is? The only defensible rationale for war is when a country faces "a clear and present danger." Under this rubric, the purpose of war becomes clear. Wars should only be waged to remove an existential threat to a society.

Forcing "democratic principles" on any nation where democracy was, heretofore, unknown is, ultimately, an exercise in futility unless the forcing power has the intention of a permanent occupation which, in practical terms, is really a colonisation. Regardless of what one thinks of the legitimacy of colonisation, it is a very lengthy and  expensive endeavor and will never succeed unless the cost of colonisation can be recouped from the assets of the colonised country. In the present international political climate such a recouping is a non-starter.

The first phase of the 2003 Iraq war: the military invasion, was based on legitimate fears. Saddam not only had but used a WMD (biological weapon), was intent on starting a nuclear program, was developing long range missiles, hated the U.S., had started two major conflicts with Iran and Kuwait, and was a ruthless and politically ambitious megalomaniac. An additional worry was that if Saddam got his hands on a nuclear weapon, he might hook up with Al Qaeda and use them as one of his mechanisms of delivery. A regime change in Iraq was a logical and justifiable military intervention. The fact that it was implemented incompetently does not negate the fact that the rationale for the invasion was based on sound reasoning. The second phase of the invasion (social re-construction) was stupid, careless and an act of extraordinary naivete.   

When the U.S took over Iraq it made a number of significant errors. The two most egregious ones were to install a Shia government in a predominately Sunni country and to disband  the Iraqi military. Further, the new Shia government would not even allow the former ruling party to even participate in Iraqi political affairs. Just where did the American military, intelligence, and foreign policy establishments think Saddam's Sunni political establishment, officer corps and intelligence networks would go when they became completely disenfranchised? Did they think they would just disappear and take up dirt farming?

 

The former political and military ruling class became very fearful for their own safety, resentful and radicalised. If for no other reason than personal security, they needed a safe haven of their own; that is to say: their own state. So they plotted and waited. And, it must be emphasized, these are not stupid people. 

When the time came, they capitalised on two other major mistakes the American occupying forces made: In 2003, during the confusion of battle, the American military left Iraq's armories unguarded and, as a consequence, they  were subsequently looted. Still these arms and materiel could not be put to full advantage with American forces still in Iraq. During the period of 2003 until 2011, Americans kept Iraq awash in cash to be used as slush funds for Iraqi politicians and to pay bribes to Sunni tribal leaders to get them to keep Al Qaeda under control. But the Americans left in 2011 and the displaced Sunni insurgents saw a golden opportunity. They knew the central bank in Mosul held several hundred million dollars in cash without adequate security.

 

It did not take long for the insurgents to seize the opportunity and in 2012 they robbed the bank and made off with over $400 million dollars. This was the third win in a logistical trifecta and resulted in a well armed, well motivated and, now, well financed insurgency in Iraq. This new insurgency was composed of two groups: the secular Baathists and the religious Islamists (Jihadis) led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. In the struggle for dominance, the Islamists out muscled the Baathists and, in 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) emerged under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

There is, by most accounts, a bloodbath going on in Syria and surrounding territories and the blame for this, rightly or wrongly, fell on American shoulders. American ineptitude, in addition to being viewed with contempt by the citizens of the middle east, has resulted in the U.S. being viewed as a paper tiger. Enemies of the U.S. now see it as weak and as lacking the will to win. Perceived weakness invites aggression.

It is vital to American security that the U.S. is be viewed as a credible military and moral force. To gain that credibility, the U.S. must win the wars that it engages in and, to be more emphatic, it must not enter into any wars that it cannot win.

So, what are the means to regain military credibility? In my opinion, the U.S. needs to replace the "Muslim theocratic fascism is evil and must be eliminated" type of narrative and substitute for it: "Muslim theocratic fascism may be evil but, more importantly, it is an existential danger and that danger must be contained."

The substituting of one narrative for the other is important. There will always be Muslim extremists as long as there are Muslims. One cannot eliminate all Muslims. This is not even theoretically possible. American actions will never and can never conform to that kind of narrative. "Containing the danger from Muslim extremists" is a narrative that U.S. actions can conform to.

For the U.S. to fight a "boots-on-the-ground-bang-bang-you're-dead" war is extremely expensive. At one point in the Iraq war it was reckoned that there was about 55,000  enemy dead at a cost of $450 billion and that was over ten years ago! The cost to make an enemy fighter bite the dust during that period? Eight million dollars! While the $8 million dollars per enemy K.I.A. is bad news (and probably represents the most expensive cost of killing each enemy fighter in history), it is not the worst news. The worst news is that the 55,000 dead enemy combatants was not nearly enough to achieve military victory.

A dozen years later, fighting ISIS is only the tip of the iceberg. The U.S, in a protracted war, would probably have to kill several times this number to make all of the various militant Islamic factions attrition rates higher than their replacement rates. The enemy has a billion and a half people to draw from. At the present rates of attrition the enemy has an endless supply of recruits. Unless Americans change their Rules Of Engagement to include "take no prisoners" they are not going to increase the enemy's attrition rates and we must face the fact that this change is not going to happen.

Therefore, the U.S. strategy has to change dramatically in order to contain a belligerent Islam. No matter how valiantly American soldiers fight, no land war with Islam can be brought to a permanent conclusion. Any boots-on-the-ground engagement would obviously conclude one day, but not in America's favour. What will end the war is that, if for no other reason, the U.S. will simply run out of money (and suffer war fatigue) and the enemy knows it.

 

For any new foreign policy strategy to succeed the U.S. military must completely disengage from Muslim countries. Americans are going to have to accept that their continued military presence in Muslim countries is intolerable to Muslims. No rapprochement with Muslims will be possible until this is done. But - and this is important - America must not leave the battlefield as perceived losers.

The solution? The military must pick a suitable radical Islamic faction to defeat. The choice of target will not be hard. The Muslims are always quarreling among themselves and all one has to do is find the most feared and hated faction and isolate and annihilate it in dramatic fashion. That would be ISIS. This will not only be a "parting gift" to the other factions but will serve as a warning that any attack on Americans or their legitimate interests will  be met with extreme ferocity. Others will observe and take note. It is imperative that the U.S. military must leave fear in the hearts of its enemies before it leaves the battlefield.

 

I believe these policies, once enacted, would remove radical Islam as an existential threat to the U.S.

 

The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan by the U.S. unleashed a series of events which completely destabilised the middle east and has resulted in several hundreds of thousands of needless deaths. This is what happens when highly credentialed but naïve do-gooders get their hands on the levers of power. The lessons for U.S. foreign policy? Quit meddling in the affairs of other people. Accept the fact that the world is not perfect and do not use war as a means of social engineering.