In an ambush near the White House, West Virginia National Guard soldier Sarah Beckstrom was killed and Andrew Wolfe wounded. Charged is 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan who worked with CIA-backed units during the war in Afghanistan.
Lakanwal came to the U.S. in 2021 thanks to Operation Allies Welcome and was granted asylum in April. Last week, Lakanwal, one of our so-called friends, drove from Washington state to kill Americans proving that no good deed goes unpunished.
Biden’s chaotic Afghanistan surrender stands as yet another failure with lasting consequences.
When we abruptly departed from the Afghanis, the plan was contingent upon the Taliban developing a government that honored and protected civil liberties for all. Did any of the army of bureaucrats throughout the State Department actually believe that we could turn any Islamic theocracy into a western-style democracy?
Cue the laugh track.
Once again, history schools those who adhere to its message that no one ever wins after being involved with Afghanistan. After defeating the British Empire, the Soviet Union and the United States, Afghanistan just moved ahead of Ohio State in the polls based on strength of schedule.
Import the Third World, get the Third World.
Lakanwal is not the cause but a symptom of the disease that seemingly metastasizes throughout presidential administrations ever since the conclusion of World War II: Nation building.
Nation building is too often sold as a noble pursuit by a benevolent people to deliver democracy, stability, and prosperity to the most unstable of nations.
History spares no one; it humbles the powerful and insists on teaching the lessons we resist. Its lessons often seem inevitable: Bygone decisions appear inescapable, and the viability of alternate pathways easily discounted.
Time and again, foreign interventions cloaked in the language of “nation building” have produced splintered societies, endless upheavals, and governments propped up by imported interests rather than the will of their own people.
While plans may look rational and even practical on paper, in practice, even the best of intentions often collapse under the weight of misguided and unrealistic altruism.
Too often democracy’s blueprint has no regard for the longstanding culture, religion, history and traditions that have existed for centuries within a civilization.
Afghanistan is the most glaring example. After two decades and trillions spent, the Afghan government fell in a matter of days once foreign troops withdrew. The Afghan army, painstakingly trained and funded by the West, disintegrated overnight.
By the end of 2003, U.S. special forces had fulfilled much of their objective in Afghanistan, targeting senior figures and high‑value assets within al‑Qaeda and the Taliban.
Rather than sheathing our swords and returning home, we embarked on nation building trying to craft democracy from a fractured tribal society filled with centuries of strife into a Western democracy. What is seemingly forgotten is how American democracy was nurtured after a bloody four-year civil war and generations of internal struggle.
Iraq tells a similar tale. The 2003 invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, but what followed was not stability but sectarian violence, corruption and the rise of ISIS. The attempt to impose a new political order created a vacuum that Islamic extremists eagerly filled plunging the country into years of turmoil.
In 2011, Libya was acknowledged as a humanitarian intervention. Instead, Libya became a failed state, splintered by militias and rival governments. The hope of any democratic rule dissolved into civil war, mass displacement and a breeding ground for human trafficking and jihadi extremism.
Nation building does not reconcile or empower – it destabilizes. Instead of creating thriving democracies, it leaves behind fractured institutions, cultural upheaval, and widespread suffering. These efforts produce fragile states reliant on foreign aid and are vulnerable to insurgency that leads to resentfulness of those who intervened. Rather than sowing prosperity and civic harmony, such projects breed dependency, resentment and chaos.
From Vietnam to Afghanistan, the pattern is unmistakable: nation building is nothing short of political hubris. The belief that we can waltz into a society and engineer change from the top down as if nations were Lego blocks to assemble.
We call it nation building when the task is about changing a civilization.
Such goodwill never stood a chance and, in its wake, comes murderous zealots like Lakanwal.
