Wars Worth Fighting

Gian Gentile of the Los Angeles Times newspaper wrote an editorial on America’s ‘nation-building’ wars http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-oe-gentile-army-colonel-gives-iraq-and-afghanis-20130813,0,3495602.story. He tells his audience, the American people, that such wars, like our current war in Iraq and Afghanistan, are failures of war based on  the British historian’s, B.H. Liddell Hart’s, definition that a war’s objective is to “produce a better state of peace”. Gentile has a surprising point of view seeing that he is an Army colonel who fought in Baghdad, but understandable based of his educational background of have a doctorate in history.

Gentile evidence is that even after all the ‘nation-building’ our armed forces have done in other nations, we don’t have a lot of success to show for it. This war has become “messy and unsatisfying” as it was well put by Lt. Col. John Nagl. Gentile also reminds his audience that we have fought satisfying war such as our Civil War and WWII and in comparison, this war is lacking. This thought process makes sense seeing that those other wars did end in “a better state of peace”. His final argument is that we shouldn't be committed to a war that can’t end in such a way.

I agree with Gentile that this is not a war that we need to be fighting. The ends of this war do not justify the means and we can’t keep trying to change a nation with a gun pointed at the heads of its citizens.