The Perils of Interventionism and Nation Building
“Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.” Thus said the early 20th-century Harvard philosophy professor George Santayana, a quotation well known by every serious historian.
As Americans watched in horror as a man held onto an airplane leaving the Kabul airport in Afghanistan, many no doubt had the feeling I had: I’ve seen this movie before. It was reminiscent of the humiliating end to America’s experience in Vietnam in 1975, when those Vietnamese who had put their trust in the United States clung to helicopters lifting off from the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.
Despite all of the history he could have drawn upon, President George W. Bush chose to ignore all of it and attempt nation building in Afghanistan. At first, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was purportedly to capture the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks upon America — Osama bin Laden. But even after bin Laden had fled the country, and even after American forces found him and killed him in Pakistan, American forces remained in Afghanistan in an attempt to create a “nation” out of one of the most backward places on earth.
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