Kondor's above statement clearly indicates he does not get why we can't nation build now as we did sixty years ago.
Kondor, old buddy, tell us how to do it.
Oh, there are a great
many reason why we have not been successful with recent attempts at Nation Building.
I've already outlined two of the more significant ones that came to mind at the time that I commented, earlier... total destruction of the land to be rebuilt, and total submissiveness on the part of the survivors.
There are others - a great
many others.
As to how to move forward with Nation-Building, if I knew the answer to that question, I would be formulating such policy on the Federal level.
Personally, I'm all for storming-in, on those occasions that require it, killing the Bad Guys, then just packing up and walking away, and let 'em fend for themselves.
War,
without the Nation-Building, afterwards.
Except, perhaps, for whatever humanitarian relief it might take, to keep innocent civilians alive for a
finite period of time, while they rebuild with international help.
Screw the Nation-Building... sometimes it pays off, but, so often, it simply does not work, and boomerangs back on us.
We do, indeed, need to do a much better job, of choosing our fights, and generating less war-activity.
Nolo contendere.
But when we
DO take up the gauntlet and decide to fight, we need to not only kick ass - which we usually do - but we also need to summon-up the gall to
just walk away afterwards, and
leave the bastards sitting in a smoking ruin,
without this Nation-Building happy horseshit.
Or, in the final alternative, if we
DO engage in Nation-Building, we need to do it far more intelligently, and in a manner consistent with the culture and beliefs of the recipients (former enemies), and in a manner that does not enrich their surviving monied classes, and with less reliance upon trying to re-mold them as Westerners and concentrating more on ensuring that Bad Guys don't return to power afterwards, and we need to do such on a sustained and generous basis, utilizing funding from other treasuries as well as our own.
But... generally speaking... I doubt our ability to Nation-Build in an intelligent fashion... so, if we
ARE going to engage in war... we're better off turning the keys over to the UN and let them sort it out (or fail in our stead), once we've cooked-down the Bad Guys and hurry our preparations to walk away.