Guess what the next step of our involvement in Libya is. Guess.

Diana West’s beat is our mad involvement in the Muslim world, and boy does she have a doozy today. She copies and comments on a story from US Today which begins:

The United States is in discussions with Libya over ways to help rebuild the country’s military, which the U.S. military considers essential to unify the country and bring rival militias under national control.

We’re looking for ways in which we can be helpful,” said Gen. Carter Ham, commander of U.S. Africa Command. “They have to find some way to form a national army.’

She then asks:

Who cares if Libya isn’t a “nation,” but a motley patchwork formerly run by a personality-cultish dictator?

Being a rational person, Miss West is missing the point. Of course Libya is not a nation, and everyone knows that it’s not a nation. If it were a nation, why would we now be embarked on the job of nation-building there?

Furthermore, what could be more more intrinsic to nation-building than helping a young democracy, or a vulnerable democracy, or a challenged nation, or a budding democracy in transition to nationhood, or whatever it is we are now calling Libya, develop a well-functioning military?

You know, just like we did in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 08, 2011 11:09 PM | Send