The Trap of Nation Building
Jules Witcover

There's an elephant in the room in this year's presidential campaign that nobody seems willing to talk about. It's the continued American pursuit of nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan under the guise of winding down the U.S. involvement in both transparently unstable Middle East countries.

In each place, American military forces went in with the stated purpose of putting out a fire. Eleven years ago in Afghanistan it was to retaliate against the perpetrators of the 911 terrorist attacks, and to drive out the Taliban regime that harbored them. It was a just cause and largely successful after a time.

Two years later in Iraq, under the false premise of the existence of weapons of mass destruction that warranted military-imposed regime change against Saddam Hussein, that mission was achieved as well. However, it was at an unjustifiable cost in American lives and treasure, still being doled out.

In neither case was it overtly declared that the original mission would be extended to a nation-building operation. But that is what occurred in both, and continues today and into the near-future. In the 2000 presidential election campaign, winner George W. Bush flatly declared in debate with Al Gore that he wanted no part of nation building. But once elected, he proceeded to undertake it, in both the justifiable war in Afghanistan and the unjustified debacle he started in Iraq.

After eight years of Bush's presidency, Barack Obama in 2008 ran and won on a campaign to get the United States out of Iraq. He pledged at the time his intent to do so and to pivot to finish what he called the right war in Afghanistan. But he also bought into the objective of nation building in both places, to the point of agreeing to additional U.S. forces in Afghanistan to bring about stability there.

Guided by American military counsel of what it would take, Obama has finally removed all of what have been defined as U.S. combat forces from Iraq, and is inching toward doing the same in Afghanistan by the end of 2014. Nevertheless, many American military and ancillary civilian employees will remain for who knows how long, ostensibly to train and advise the indigenous regimes in both places.

If this not nation building, what is it? Whatever the name, the American people have emphatically declared in various opinion polls that they're fed up with it and want it to end. The latest fiascos of the Koran burnings and now the massacre of 16 Afghan villagers, by an apparently unbalanced American soldier after multiple combat deployments, have thrown kerosene on the resentment and impatience of citizens there and over here.

The inflammatory remarks of Afghan President Hamid Karzai essentially inviting American forces to get out of the country may be no more than bravado for domestic consumption. But they offer an opportunity to Obama to accelerate the U.S. withdrawal if indeed he does not want to be dragged into endless propping up of a corruption-rotted regime.

Unfortunately, all this foreign-policy folly is going forward in the midst of a presidential campaign that is largely ignoring it. The Republican candidates predictably would pounce on any Obama effort to extricate the United States faster from all this nation building as cutting and running. It's a familiar phrase from the Vietnam War, in which American engagement went on beyond all rationality.

Yet this political campaign should not run its course debating the pros and cons of federal involvement in contraception, and whether Mitt Romney is authentic or not. It should instead confront the wisdom of America staying the course of nation building abroad at the neglect of dire economic recovery needs at home.

Perhaps such a debate will occur in the general election this fall, with Obama making the case for hewing to his plans and timetable for ending what have been among the longest wars in American history, and of dubious ultimate justification to boot. Sadly, it's much more likely we will witness another round of attacks on "Obamacare," otherwise known as an attempt to provide more affordable health care for more Americans.