PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

WSJ Op-Ed Deflates Bush's Nation-Building Experiment
by AntiChimp Thursday, Jun. 30, 2005 at 10:18 AM
antichimp2005@yahoo.com

Even some at the Wall Street Journal are starting to recognize the futility of Nation Building.

An op-ed piece in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, of all places, very effectively takes apart George Bush's and the PNACkers vision of global democracy. Here's a short sample:

God help the army that must fight for an idea rather than an objective. After somehow failing to argue competently on behalf of a patently justifiable invasion, and as its more specious arguments were collapsing, the Bush administration then pivoted with breathtaking enthusiasm to nation building, something so Clinton-tinged that it had previously been held in contempt. The more that nation building in Iraq is in doubt, the more the mission creeps into a doubling of bets in hope of covering those that are lost. Now the goal is to reforge the politics, and perforce the culture, not merely of Iraq but of the billion-strong Islamic world from Morocco to the South Seas. That--evangelical democracy writ overwhelmingly large--is the manic idea for which the army must fight.

The piece, entitled Our Blindness, was written by Mark Helprin back in January, 2005, and really takes a hard look at the bigger picture. By doing so, Helprin's words paint a frightening picture of what we've done, and what we really need to be worrying about. For example, what if all of these Muslim-dominated cultures that we seek to transform truly held free elections? We'd be in big trouble, that's what, as the Muslim Brotherhood would take over in Egypt and al Quaeda friendly Muslim extremists in Saudi Arabia, among others. Does it seem like Bush and the PNACkers really thought this thing nation-building thing through?

Furthermore, what guarantee does democracy hold against terrorism? That's just another assumption that might not hold water.

The fact is, we've neglected our security apparatus at home, while engaged in ideology-fueled nation-building in the middle east, and we are that much more vulnerable because of it.

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