Integrated nationbuilding

According to The Washington Times:

The Pentagon yesterday announced a landmark change in the use of combat troops, elevating "stability missions" -- commonly called nation-building -- to an equal status with major combat operations.
The evolution in war-planning priorities underscores how the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terror network continue to fundamentally reshape how U.S. military commanders deploy the armed forces.
Not only are U.S. forces becoming more mobile to better counter Islamic terrorists, but the chain of command now will be trained in how to "build" nations by creating indigenous security forces, democratic institutions and free markets...
Among the goals and functions listed in the paper are to rebuild security forces, prisons and judicial systems; "revive or build the private sector"; and "develop representative governmental institutions."

For the sake of pride, they won't openly admit that stability in post-Saddam Iraq did not go according to plan. The country did not self-organize quickly along the lines of a stable democracy.

Still, this was 18 months in the planning. That means Rumsfeld officially initiated the change in mid-2004. Given the timing of the positioning of Rice at the State Department, Wolfowitz at the World Bank, and Goss at the CIA, this all fits within a coherent attempt to reorganize the various organizations to not only ensure stability, but export democracy and free markets.

It would appear that Clinton's wisdom was at least partially correct. While he too was in favor of regime change in Iraq, he was apparently concerned with nationbuilding to ensure stability in a post-Saddam Iraq.

The Clinton administration has been spending the money Congress appropriated to overthrow Saddam Hussein on contractors and consultants while withholding arms from the Iraqi opposition, experts said.
The latest example is a workshop proposed by the Conflict Management Group, a nonprofit offshoot of Harvard Negotiation Project at Harvard Law School. The subcontractor group describes its objective in turbid academic jargon: "To identify, diagnose, and enhance the ability of the Iraqi opposition parties, and the individuals within the parties, to discuss, design, and facilitate intra- and inter-organization dialogue, cooperation, and problem solving."
Translation: Pull Iraqi resistance fighters out of the field, bring them to Harvard, and teach them how to get along.

There's a lot of ambition evident in planning for democracy-in-a-box. Time will tell how effective this effort is.