The difference is we spent four years slaughtering that resistance in WWII, while in Afghanistan (and Iraq) it simply melted away into the countryside because it knew it could win pitched battles. That is why we did not face the guerilla opposition in Germany and Japan that we do in Afghanistan: We had already killed or captured virtually its entire fighting force. The Afghan and Iraqi enemy did not stop fighting just because they let us march into the capital mostly unopposed; they just fought a guerilla rather than conventional war. We signed no peace treaty with either Saddam or the Taliban: We removed them from power. The war continues.


Our problem in both was that we did not have enough men to throw at either, much less both simultaneously. Even in terms purely of occupation, Americas 1945 occupation had the luxury of retaining as many as neccesary of the 3 million soldiers it took to conquer Nazi Germany, then sending the rest home. How many soldiers on their first German tour in May of '45 were on their fifth involuntary one three years later?

Occupations require martial law; their very nature is controlling a hostile populace. Martial law requires martial forces, and ours are as grossly insufficient in Afghanistan as they were in Iraq. GPS, Tomahawks and Predators cannot control and monitor every person in each grid of cities and entire countrysides; that requires men who can think and interrogate, not just watch and shoot. We only succeeded in Iraq once the Sunnis were willing to deal? According to Wikipedia,


We NEVER "succeeded" in Iraq, because we never had the will or numbers for that. We accepted the reality we could accomplish no more than we had (removing Saddam from power) and got to Hell out of there.


If that is your position we DEFINITELY failed, because the insurgency is as strong as ever. The country appears on the brink of the civil war and/or Iranian takeover everyone expected once we left, but that is no longer our problem. The insurgency did not disappear or diminish; it is just no longer killing Americans.


Sure we can: Impose martial law in the way already described, and well demonstrated by the occupations of both Germany and Japan. It is, however, doubtful the US or global public will tolerate any US general setting himself up as god-emperor and remaking their constitution in his image as MacArthur did in Japan. Last I checked, Japans constitution even forbade it possessing offensive military capabilities. However, the American public has no desire for the investment of time, money, energy and lives such a full scale occupation requires; it never did.

We could NEVER win in Afghanistan OR Iraq in any sense except removing hostile governments and getting the individuals who planned and financed 911. See link.


Rebuilding either country required un-building what Saddam and the Taliban created. It required removing every last vestige of their autocratic governments, 24 hour curfews enforced by sentries at every major intersection verifying everyone on the street was who they claimed, where they belonged and doing what they were assigned, while aggressive patrols ensured no one slipped through the cracks. It also required a complete re-education of the populace, true indoctrination with principles of democracy and human rights. In particular, it required maintaining that level of presence and control until natives just entering school on our arrival reached voting age, so we leave the countries in the hands of an enlightened democratic electorate much of which had never been tainted in the first place by the theocratic tyranny we sought to annihilate. After a decade of that, you have West Germany ca. 1954 (when it became a (mostly) sovereign state.) The real tragedy of Iraq and Afghanistan is that, though we never intended to be, we were there long enough to do it: We simply never desired and therefore never exerted the necessary efforts.

We know how to do this; we have done it in the past. We just refuse.