[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
On Oct 7, 2001, the United States began an ill-fated campaign to ‘nation build’ Afghanistan.
Now 24 years after that anniversary and 2 years after the Oct 7 attacks by Hamas, we may be on the cusp of an even worse nation-building program in Gaza that seems to have learned absolutely nothing from the disastrous nation-building operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Right down to resurrecting former UK PM Tony Blair to head ‘nation building’ in Gaza.
Nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq failed for three reasons.
- The Bush administration believed that the problem in Afghanistan, Iraq and other Muslim countries wasn’t the people, their culture or Islamic religion, but their governments.
- Bringing ‘democracy’ and ‘free enterprise’ into murderous tribal societies was supposed to marginalize Islamic terrorists by giving the locals something better to do than kill infidels.
- Foreign aid experts and world government types would build a ‘technocratic’ government propped up by international investments to turn Afghanistan and Iraq into Switzerland.
A generation later all of this seems idiotic and insane. And we’re about to do it all over again.
The Gaza ‘peace plan’ is based on these same three fantasies that failed disastrously in Afghanistan and Iraq. None of this would work even if Hamas did not exist. Since Hamas does exist and runs Gaza, it will fail even faster than Afghanistan or Iraq did. The only question is how much it will cost us. And how badly it will destabilize the region and spread Islamic terrorism.
The Gaza peace plan is rife with bullet points about “technocratic, apolitical governance”, “Arab partners”, “panels of experts” and using “international standards to create modern and efficient governance” that could have been taken from the nation building plans for Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention the original efforts to create a ‘Palestinian’ state or the efforts to turn Gaza into a testbed for a ‘Palestinian’ state that allowed Hamas to take over.
The Bush G8 statement on Gaza in 2004 promised to “build democratic, transparent and accountable Palestinian institutions”, using the World Bank as a “transparent mechanism for receipt of international assistance” and “fair and transparent” elections.
3 years later, Hamas was in complete control of Gaza. Why?
The Arab Muslim population occupying Gaza did not want “technocratic experts” or “peaceful coexistence”. Neither did the Afghans or Iraqis. We deluded ourselves into thinking they did.
They wanted an Islamic state and a perpetual war with the rest of the non-Muslim world. Until we recognize this, every ‘nation building’ program for the Muslim world will end the same way whether it’s Bush’s democracy, Obama’s New Middle East or new efforts to make over Gaza.
When nation building programs are announced, “international experts” and aid groups swarm to come up with exciting ideas involving solar panels and microfinance, solicit billions in aid and then vacation in the Swiss Alps while the Islamic terrorists on the ground cash the checks.
The Taliban took over Afghanistan using the money we spent sending aid, building roads and funding schools to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the Afghans. The Houthis built their war machine in Yemen on the backs of the aid we sent to fix their fake famine. Hamas has been doing the same thing. The more money goes into Gaza, the bigger the terrorists get.
The Gaza peace plan, like all nation-building projects, pretends that some ‘international’ system will do the heavy lifting. As generations of UN peacekeeping forces should have taught us, we are the only ones who will be doing any heavy lifting, both financially and militarily, if needed.
The plan depends on international monitors, observers and experts to confirm that Hamas is disarming, to oversee aid, to negotiate future conflicts and run Gaza. We’ve tried all that as recently as Lebanon last year and it still doesn’t work. And that globalist fantasy will never work.
The proposed International Stabilisation Force (ISF) is just a rebranded UN peacekeeping force (minus the UN logo) that will either consist of countries too afraid to fight Islamic terrorists, like the UN peacekeeping forces in Lebanon, or Muslim forces actively supportive of the terrorists. When another conflict breaks out, we’ll be the ones expected to prop up the ISF’s legitimacy.
And that’s exactly why we weren’t able to get out of Iraq or Afghanistan.
Our efforts to turn over operations to the locals in Iraq and Afghanistan proved impossible because the local forces were either Jihadis or corrupt cowards. Gaza will be even worse.
The Gaza ‘peace plan’ calls for the ISF to train and support “vetted Palestinian police forces in Gaza”. The only ‘police forces’ in Gaza are Hamas which has been running it for 18 years. The only competing forces are those of the PLO in the West Bank. When the Clinton administration tried to set up ‘Palestinian police forces’, it armed and trained the Islamic terror groups who went on to wreak havoc with attacks and suicide bombings across Israel.
Where are the “vetted police forces” supposed to come from in an area where the only ones who have military training and police experience are members of Islamic terrorist groups?
The question is the answer. In Afghanistan, we armed the private armies of Jihadi warlords. In Iraq, we armed Shiite Jihadi militias. In Gaza, we’re going to arm the PLO and Hamas while executing a plan to ‘disarm’ Hamas. Hamas terrorists will just become Hamas police officers.
Hamas will hand over its weapons to itself as part of the “buy back and reintegration program” described in the peace plan. And if we’re lucky, we’ll get to pay Hamas to turn over its weapons to itself which will be an even better scam than anything the Afghans or Iraqis pulled on us.
The long term ‘plan’ is for the PLO to complete a “reform program” and have its ‘Palestinian Authority’ take control of Gaza. Every single administration, beginning with the Clinton administration, which created the Palestinian Authority, based its peace plan on reforming it.
None of those proposals ever worked. What are the odds they’ll work any better now?
During the Oct 7 war, the PLO and Hamas went to Moscow and Beijing to negotiate a unity agreement. Elements of the PLO took part in the Oct 7 attacks and the terrorist authority continues to call for Jihad. But if you can’t trust a Communist-Islamist terror group to ‘reform’ after 30 years of broken promises, lies and terrorism, whom can you trust to run Gaza?
The Gaza peace plan is not realistic about the causes of war, and about the reasons why nation building failed in Iraq and Afghanistan, instead it revives world government proposals as the solution to everything even though those proposals not only failed, but led to more terrorism.
America should not be in Gaza. We should not be sending aid, nation building, policing or negotiating anything in that particular hellhole or anywhere in the Muslim world. If we haven’t learned that lesson after 7,000 dead and over $1 trillion spent, when will we finally learn?