Nation Building?

Uncertain Principles takes on the Warbloggers' use of post-war Japan and an example.

... which reminds me of one of the nagging problems I have with the standard "warblogger" line on terrorism and militant Islam. A common sentiment among the hawks of the "blogosphere" is that we need to go to war with any and every Arab country out there (if not every Muslim country) to "teach them a lesson." Then, having destroyed their "poisonous culture" we need to "rebuild them like we did Germany and Japan."

There are a large number of problems with this, beginning the manifest stupidity of the idea that humiliating the Arab world will somehow make them see the light (as noted elsewhere, this is too stupid for words, where "We might define 'too stupid for words' as the certainty that one's opponents will see the same virtues in your actions that you do."), and ending with the creepily racist overtones of the whole thing. Somewhere in the middle is the fact that this grossly overstates our ability to re-shape other cultures.

Read the whole article here.