Iraq

http://www.stripes.com/american-way-of-war-it-may-surprise-you-1.292182

I must respectfully disagree with the author. We could create a stable,
democratic government in Iraq, if we were committed to the task. Nation
building requires patience and commitment, which are hard to find in any
country when their sons and daughters are dying to protect and help another.
Patience is even harder to come by when it turns out the initiating event
was overstated or outright false.

The author quite accurately points out the negative pattern of American war
making, that of going to war quickly over an initiating event (real or
fabricated), and notes that in the case of Iraq, the narrative that led us
to war was false.

But Iraq is not (and never was) an impossible task; as an example of the
American capacity for nation-building, we almost single-handedly rebuilt
Japan, carried the lion's share of rebuilding Germany, as well heavily
assisting the rebuilding Europe in general after WWII, and did all three of
these things simultaneously, while ourselves transitioning from a war
economy to a peacetime one. Today it is inconceivable to think of the US
going to war with Japan or Germany, or they with us. We did nation-building
right in those places, and as a testament to our commitment there, we still
have bases in Germany and Japan. (I grant that the major reason for their
continued existence after nation-building was the Cold War.)

Agreed that our major mistake in Iraq was going there in the first place,
but nevertheless, we could have accomplished nation-building, were we
committed to it. Why weren't we? Because the stated reason for it didn't
ring true after IEDs started killing young Americans. Notably, the reason
for getting into WWII did stand the test of time, and we committed to
post-war reconstruction, while in both Iraq and Vietnam we had trumped up
reasons and sloppy execution. Both quickly became unpopular in the U.S.,
and both are (my opinion) failed wars. The lesson I would take from this is
that your reason for going to war better be solid, or society's support for
your actions won't be and you will be caught short.

Regarding the present situation there, I am in the
"we-broke-it-we-bought-it" school of thought. We, on our own authority,
subjected the Iraqi people to more than a decade of war and sloppy,
shortsighted postwar planning; for this reason we still have a moral duty to
them. I'm not saying we need to solve all their problems, or attempt to go
back en masse, but we owe them the actions necessary to spare them the
ravages of a long term civil war, and we should stop pretending that this
mess isn't our problem.