- Historic Sites At a time when it can offer answers to urgent
questions, we have forgotten America’s long history of “nation
building.” June/July 2002 | Volume 53, Issue 3 In late January
2002 Hamid Karzai, the newly installed leader of Afghanistan,
visited Washington and New York. He received a standing ovation
at the President’s State of the Union address, and glowing press
attention, in no small part because of his gentle demeanor and
splendid attire. But he did not receive what he had come for, an
enlarged U.S. peacekeeping presence in his wartorn country.
President Bush turned him down cold, offering him economic aid,
military aid, anything but what he really wanted: U.S. troops to
patrol his country and bring peace to his people. America was
not going to engage in “nation building,” Bush declared. This
should have come as no surprise. To large segments of the
Republican foreign policy establishment and the military, nation
building became anathema in the 1990s, thanks to the debacle in
Somalia so power