Letters: War -- what is it good for?

Re “Nation-building at gunpoint,” Opinion, Aug. 13

Army Col. Gian Gentile makes more sense than our national leaders, past and present, who believed that we could remake nations in our image.

After a Democratic administration failed in its nation-building attempt in Vietnam, many thought the concept had died a natural death. President Nixon’s policy was to get us out, although he took too long.

Later, the neoconservatives in the George W. Bush administration led us into this same nation-building swamp in Afghanistan and Iraq. Intellectuals in the capital stand firm behind their beliefs — and from behind their desks — that we must continue the resultant never-ending wars while our soldiers such as Gentile and his battalion do the fighting and dying.

The Op-Ed article reminds us that the colonel’s views are his own. He should know that the views he expressed are not his alone.

Jack Eiden

Pico Rivera

With all due respect to Gentile, I think his pessimistic views on the past decade’s wars are misguided.

The headline alone suggests that our mission was forced on the local populations, as if they did not want a functioning, secure state. I have heard this many times.

On the strategic side, pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan without sufficiently helping to build up their state institutions would have left them, and in turn us, vulnerable to the same threats that caused us to invade.

If those countries are not in optimal shape now, think of how much worse off they would have been without us there after the invasions.

Joseph McCarthy

Calabasas

I would argue that America’s very unsatisfying wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not the result of nation-building but rather a lack of commitment by our political leaders to do what is necessary to win our wars and to achieve our political objectives.

Using Gentile’s logic, one could make the argument that all wars have failed at producing a “better state of peace,” to use British historian B.H. Liddell Hart’s words that are cited in the article. After all, we still have wars, don’t we?

Nation-building is not a means unto itself. It is a byproduct, a corollary in our reasoning for war.

Perhaps Gentile should have quoted Carl von Clausewitz, who noted, “The ultimate object of our wars, the political one, is not always quite a simple one.”

Van Warren

Columbus, Ga.

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