Should our occupation of Afghanistan been more like that of Japan?

[dsc]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Japan

We were very hands on in Japan, we wrote a sample Constitution that Japan largely took, we approved all of the early officials. For 8 years Japan was directly ruled by the US. We insisted on women having the right to vote. We even made them remove Shinto as the state religion. While we have troops in Japan still, literally no one cares since the last one who died in combat did so in the 1950's. We completely remade Japan and created a stable democracy in a county which had no tradition of democracy. Afghanistan needed to be remade. We clearly didn't manage that at any level. In about 3x as much time we left the country with pretty much no noticeable difference.

[underpants]

1. It wouldn't have made a difference

It’s not really a country and no amount of money will change it.

[JohnSJ]

2. Japan was United under an emperor, Afghanistan is tribal under war lords, no?

[Sympthsical]

27. This is the correct answer

Japan had been a more or less united entity for a long time.

Afghanistan has always had tribal conflict. It has never had any kind of self-generated unity as a polity.

Trying to enforce a governmental structure on an artificial state is building on quicksand. As soon as you stop holding it up, it'll sink.

[JohnSJ]

28. Appreciate the insight

[Walleye]

3. I don't know. We had a flatten two cities with atom bombs to get that to work

[dsc]

5. I don't think we had a lack of fire power in Afghanistan

I do think we were more judicious in the use of power but it wasn't lacking.

[Walleye]

6. Well I hope we've learned one or two things

[Runningdawg]

4. That might have worked IF we dropped a couple nukes on Afghanistan first.

[irisblue]

14. How would Haliburton made money in a radioactive zone then?

[Runningdawg]

29. I'm sure Air America has made the poppy fields safe.

[paleotn]

7. No tradition of liberal democracy as we know it, but...and here's the big but....

Japan had a strong, national identity. Plus, Japan rising from a closed, semi feudal society to a first rate global power in such a short time was nothing short of remarkable. In 1945, Japan was as sophisticated and technologically advanced as any nation on earth. A global power, that like Germany, had been bludgeoned to its knees. Literally.

Afghanistan, on the other hand, is barely a country in the typical sense. Outside of Kabul, it's really just a loosely associated bunch of ethnic tribal groups who's primary focus is to be left alone. They simply don't want anything to do with our idea of what they should be. Their power structure is happy the way they are. Been that was since Alexander. Hasn't changed all that much since. And no amount of bludgeoning will change that. The graveyard of empires is best left alone, in my opinion.

[dsc]

8. Japan was Asia in terms of power projection to be sure

and easily the equivalent of France and the UK in terms of power projection and technology. That is quite true.

[keithbvadu2]

9. In Japan, the emperor said: do it!

In Japan, the emperor said: do it!

[ChicagoRonin]

10. Not really applicable

For all the reasons previously mentioned and then some. By the wartime period, Japan already had all the trappings of a modern nation: standardized education, electrified infrastructure, public transportation, factories, professional bureaucracy, political parties, etc. The Occupation didn't have to build out any of that (aside from what needed to be REbuilt after wartime bombing). And despite the cultural nationalism that reared its head in Japan during the war, you had a population that readily embraced Western ideas and entertainment, especially in peacetime. During the Korean War, occupied Japan was a very welcoming go-to spot for R&R for American soldiers.

[alphafemale]

11. Japan was not committed to living in the 5th century.

No amount of time or showing a way to a better life will change that country...ever.

[irisblue]

12. not a good parallel. Japan had a well established social order in a very small island

I get your line of thought as a jump off, but it doesn't carry through

[Hekate]

13. Japan and Afghanistan are not at all comparable

[dalton99a]

15. +1. Or Vietnam and Afghanistan

[Voltaire2]

16. If we are considering what we should have done:

we should have not invaded and occupied Afghanistan. Problem solved.

[GoCubsGo]

17. So, we are now the arbiters of which countries need to be "remade"?

Unlike Japan, we were not at war with Afghanistan, and as far as I know, we are still not. We weren't in there to create a stable democracy. That was just window dressing, so that nobody would notice that it was just another looting of our treasury by the Military Industrial Complex.

[dsc]

18. we were at war with them

they harbored Osama Bin Laden

[GoCubsGo]

19. They found Bin Laden in Pakistan.

Should we have started a war and "remade" them, too?

And, we were at war with Al Qaeda, not Afghanistan.

[Voltaire2]

25. When did we declare that war?

[Hortensis]

20. Another HUGE difference: Japan threatened the U.S.'s existence,

and after losing the war it started against us (causing hundreds of thousands of American casualties), we and our allies required UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER. Allied nations then occupied Japan to make sure Japan would cease to be a threat to other nations.

Btw, just looked out of curiosity, not that it's relevant, but the Allies' occupation army numbered nearly a million.

(For once, we actually have real donuts this morning.)

[dsc]

21. we did the work

Britain was there for a short time but left and we forbid Russia and France from taking part. Japan was a much larger country than Afghanistan. I do think hands on would have taken more troops but not a million.

[Hortensis]

24. Whatever? The point is little things like UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER

between nations at full-out war.

Interesting idea that perhaps we should have sent in (somewhat fewer than) a million personnel to completely take over and try to remake an Islamic nation with many parallels to the medieval era into a modern western-style one.

Which reminds me to wonder how Japan's Shintoism and Buddhism and Afghanistan's Sunni Islam might play into the comparison, or lack of it.

[betsuni]

22. I can't stop thinking how in pre-WW2 Japan girls from poor families were sold as

servants or prostitutes. or if they were lucky sold to teahouses to train as geishas. And how Japan forced women, mostly Korean, to be sex slaves (the absurd euphemism "comfort women" ) for soldiers during the war. Today was the anniversary of the surrender of Japan in WW2.

My Japanese mother-in-law had to marry a man she didn't really know in 1958 and was bitter about it for the rest of her life (he was in love with someone who his family considered unacceptable and wasn't happy about it either but they threatened to disown him).

Ugh. All over the world.

[JoanofArgh]

23. We shouldn't have occupied period. That was the mistake.

[David__77]

26. That would not have "worked."

And I don’t think the US onesidedly imposed a system on Japan. There were liberal and leftist forces well-established in Japan decades before the end of the war. In Afghanistan leftism has been crushed in part thanks to the US.