Why Study War?
Do we need to study war?<p>The &quot;War&quot; parts of Afghanistan and Iraq were a resounding victory for the USA. We basically won every fight.<p>Or do we need to study governance and nation building? The part that comes after a war? I can&#x27;t help but think about the Philippine–American War &#x2F; Insurrection (after the USA gained the Philippines from the Spanish in the late 1800s), and compare it against the Afghanistan mission.<p>In both cases, the USA wished to nation-build (the Philippines as a colony, but build it up nonetheless was a goal). It took many decades and the Philippines was given independence due to WW2 later on.<p>I think of heroic figures like Jose Rizal (author of many books in many dialects in the Philippines) who helped build the identity of the Philippines as a country. (Remember: there are 7000+ islands, and hundreds of languages&#x2F;dialects, along with many subcultures. The idea of unifying them all under one banner must have been exhausting).<p>I see similarities and differences (most noticeably, the Spanish spread Catholicism across the nation ahead of time. Sharing a religion probably made the job easier. It was also the 1900s, so American-atrocities were more accepted back then compared to today&#x27;s media heavy environment).<p>But we&#x27;re talking about a nation that was basically undergoing a civil war in 1890s vs the Spanish. The USA took over a few years, and then the civil war continued into a Philippine-USA war&#x2F;insurrection. The myriad of languages&#x2F;cultures of the Philippines from island-to-island cannot be denied (much like how Afghanistan is a collection of tribes scattered throughout the region).<p>The Taliban similarly were waging a civil war &#x2F; transforming the Afghanistan before the USA took it over in early 2000. The Taliban continued to fight, much as the Katipunan continued to fight &#x2F; beat up Americans for years after the takeover.<p>There&#x27;s even an element of Islamic rule in the Philippine history: the Moro (the Islamic islands) in the south were particularly difficult for the Americans to control after the Spanish-American War.<p>What went wrong? What went right? In both the Philippine Revolution as well as the Afghanistan one? If more people studied the Philippine-American history, could the Afghanistan occupation gone better?