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Originally Posted by TheSollyLama
The 'focused manner' of which you speak, Phil, doesn't exist though. There simply is no organization equipped to deal with the task of Nation Building. So it falls to our military and those we hire in a quasi-military form.
We excel at kicking ass. Our military is far and away the best in the world. But it is not a police force, nor the United Way- although we're forced to use it as such. To remove any threat gov't (whether you think Iraq was or not) is to completely shatter the infrastructure of a nation. With despots like Saddam or Kim Jong Il, the nation and it's infrastructure ARE the leadership. You cannot separate the two.
When we dismantled the entire Iraqi gov't- as I believe we were forced to do because of the Baathist dominance of it- we all but made Iraq another US state.
But the fact of nation building cannot dominate our foreign policy either. It's a risk that must be taken at times (and again- whether this was one of those times, I'll leave to the individual) despite the long term fallout.
The invasion of a country and the toppling of it's gov't means we are taking de facto responsibility to rebuild that country after. It's hard, expensive, and riddled with issues. Certainly it wasn't all roses and candygrams with the Marshall Plan in Europe, but there we also had the support of the world, where today that support is gone- and not just from us starting wars.
Long ago the UN and Euro Union stopped representing what's 'best' for the world in favor of what's best for themselves.
Simply- we cannot remove a dictator from the job so easily. It's not like the US where we go happily along changing leadership. There, the entire system IS the leader and his cronies (yeah I know, we suffer from that here too, but less so) and removing them plunges the entire country into chaos.
Nation Building is a losing effort 99% of the time. People might point to the Marshall Plan, but given the recent problems we've had with france and germany- I'd hardly call Marshall a victory for the US.
It just can't dictate our policy though to avoid nation building. We want change in the world, and that ain't free.
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But we (as you note) are not suited for nation building, and it pretty much never works anyway. So back to the focused part. If all of these two-bit tinpots knew that if they fuck with us, we'll just show up, kick their butts, and leave, (and if they didn't we'd mind our own business) they wouldn't fuck with us so much. It's all this game-playing and fiddling about and wishy-washyness that makes them think they can. Part of the problem is this attitude of "we want change in the world". It's not just our world. We ought to be concerned with being the best and most free country we can be, lead by example, and let the rest of the world figure out how to solve their own problems. They are all grownups, too.