Three tales of failed nation building by Americans overseas.

We have three articles from today’s New York Times which show very clearly why our constant efforts at ‘nation building’ are often a waste of time. And that is to say nothing of the American blood being shed needlessly with the associated shattered lives of soldiers and sailors, airmen and marines.

This is also usually a matter of wasting much needed American money overseas when we need it here at home to fix and reconstruct our shattered social and physical infrastructure. This is an old story with our Republic, but one that is worth investigating again. When we waste blood and treasure on the ‘nation building’ fantasy we allow our own people to be raped.  We seem to be in constant need of relearning this lesson.

You must realize by now that the wealthy do not need government. They are above it. Other than police and fire protection and perhaps national defense it does not provide them with anything they need. That is why they always balk at paying for it with their fair share of taxes. That is true for the rich of every country, not only ours.

And that is why as veterans who have borne the burden of freedom in good times and in bad, we must insist that the powerful, the wealthy and the influential pull their fair share of the load relative to supporting "good government".

That means "tax money" and "following the rules". Lets take a look at the three pieces in the Times today and see what happens when the powerful and the influential in our puppet government in Afghanistan and in our government here at home do not support reasonable government action at all.

The first story we need to reflect upon today is entitled Afghan Killing Bares a Karzai Family Feud and it shows how the wealthy in Afghanistan (and here perhaps?) are above the law in whichever way they choose to be so whenever they choose to be so.

In this story we read a previously unreported major news story that both the Afghan and American governments are suspected of supressing in the media. Here is an excerpt:

"There has been no investigation of the shooting by the Afghan government nor any mention of it in the press. The F.B.I. questioned Hashmat Karzai a month ago, he acknowledged, but it is not clear whether American investigators are pursuing the matter. An F.B.I. spokesman declined to comment.

While some family members accuse the Karzai government of stonewalling, they do not claim that the president played an active role in blocking an investigation. Instead, they blame several of his brothers, including Ahmed Wali Karzai, the political boss of Kandahar and southern Afghanistan, for trying to hush up relatives and forestall an official inquiry, perhaps with the president’s knowledge.

"Not a single soul has come to investigate," Yar Mohammad Karzai, 62, said in a recent telephone interview. "I told one local official, what do you want me to do, knock on Obama’s door?"

Noor Karzai, 40, a cousin who lives in Maryland, expressed similar disappointment. "They are protecting Hashmat," he said. "He is sitting in Kabul getting money from the U.S. government. No one will touch him. We are sending billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money to Afghanistan, and this is how the government operates."

In essence the brother of the President of Afghanistan is almost certainly involved somehow in the shooting death and outright execution of an innocent young Afghan man, an eighteen year old,  in broad daylight using armed guards in an open mosque in front of a crowd of innocent citizens and neither the Afghan government nor the American government is forcing an investigation. There has been no real press coverage of the execution of this eighteen year old until now. Is this democracy? Is this ‘nation building’?

This is some nation building huh? Is this your idea of a functioning democracy? It isn’t my idea either.

In the second piece entitled Afghan Cabinet Nominations Show Little Change we find that despite warnings from the U.S. about his corrupt government and plenty of speeches from Karzai telling the world he would change the direction of the Afghan central government, not much has changed and it does not look like it will change. What a surprise!  Why are we supporting this clown? Why are American troopers and marines being killed and maimed every day so that this farce can move forward?  This is a crime before God.

The reason that this is important is because our government is constantly telling us that soldiers and marines are sacrificing their lives and their bodies and mental health in Afghanistan to build a democracy. It isn’t working is it?

And the President of the U.S. wants another $30 billion dollars to continue the fighting in order to support this ridiculous farce? I think not. This is outright deception on the part of both the Afghan government and our government. Why was this news story supressed? Why are we doing everything that we can to support an outright criminal ‘government’ in the ghost nation and artificial country called Afghanistan?

Bring the troops and the money home. This is outrageous.  This is outright deception for the sake of the interests of Big Money in America and abroad.  And our young people in uniform are being killed for this?  This defies reasonable explanation.

And finally in an Op Ed piece by Maureen Dowd entitled Blunder on the Mountain we find that Osama Bin Laden’s escape from Tora Bora is a story that is hardly believable, even to a citizen who is only mildly informed. Here is a crucial excerpt:

"Eight years after Tora Bora, the failure there poses the question at the heart, or Achilles’ heel, of President Obama’s strategy: What if victory over Al Qaeda and other terrorists lies in Pakistan, not Afghanistan?

Are we going to go get them in Pakistan or not? Osama’s evading us and ending up in Pakistan is the perfect humiliating symbol of our failure to deal with that question."

You see, the thing about war is, it is easy to expand and damned near impossible to control. Now we are in.  How do we get out?

So what do you think? Should we bankroll a war in Pakistan next? Do we need to engage in "nation building" there too? How do you think the Pakistanis feel about that? How much will that cost in American blood and treasure?

As you can see, there is never any end to ‘nation building’ is there? And also, in the end, the only people that pay a significant price for American nation building failures are American troops, marines, sailors and airmen. Do you honestly think the average American cares when less than 1% of our population is carrying the burden of these wars overseas?

Most Americans do not even know someone on active duty, let alone a trooper somewhere in a combat zone. This is a national tragedy. And if we veterans let our country’s elites get away with this nonsense any longer, then we have not served either the republic nor our people in uniform. It is time to stop playing nice. It is time to get mean.  We must demand the return of our troopers and our money from these devastatingly ruinous debacles overseas.

Nation building is always a better idea on paper than it is in reality. People have a way of resisting foreign influence, no matter how good an idea it may seem to the rich and powerful of the foreign nations who are looking for safe places to invest and park their money.  So the myth of ‘nation building’ continues.

The veterans community in the U.S. needs to rethink its responsibilites toward the direction our republic is moving and toward our role in helping to govern this nation. The time for silence is over. It is long past time for cohesive group action to bring this republic back to reason and transparency in everything it does in our name.

Nation building is a deceptive device to ensure that the rich and powerful of America and the West have open markets by using the force of arms to ensure trade in dangerous parts of the world.  There has to be a better way to make the wealthy even wealthier without sacrificing working class American youth in ‘nation building’ idiocy.

CWO3 Tom Barnes, USCG (Ret.)