May 12, 2004

Band Aid Strategy

Regions of Mind misses the point regarding the new nation building that responsible people are talking about.


Fighting terrorism does mean contemplating the use of military action abroad over the long term. But it does not follow that the United States is therefore under an obligation, pragmatic or moral, to engage repeatedly in costly and doubtful interventions to pursue nation-building. On that point, Brooks and others including The Weekly Standard and The New Republic have it quite wrong.

The problem with adopting an approach that is military intervention friendly but nation building hostile is that you end up coming back to the same place time after time after time. You stick band aids on a leaky pipe instead of actually fixing the pipe. How many times have we been in Haiti? How many times will we go back without a proper course of nation building to rid them of their self-destructive disconnectedness? How many other countries will have repeat visits or just long ones like our forces along the DMZ between the Koreas?

We're too poor to be cheap about fixing our security issues.

Posted by TMLutas at May 12, 2004 09:28 AM