I've got a question re: the Afghan War

Knoxville-Horn

Knoxville-Horn

1,000+ Posts
This is an honest question; not a defense of the Afghan War. As an original supporter of the action, I have now come to terms with the fact that we're not going to turn the region into a M.E. Disneyland. The obvious reason is that the populace is so entirely set in their ways that it would take, probably, generations to positively affect the region. And, even then, a mere 1% of the population could still completely disrupt everyday life if adamant.

My question revolves around Japan. I'm wondering what the difference was/is between what we did in Japan and what, obviously, isn't working in the M.E.

I know both cultures were/are entirely fanatical in support of their leaders/religion. In some ways, the Japanese were even more fanatical than those in the current M.E. in that they had almost an entire population that was willing to die for the cause. I'm not sure what the percentage of like-minded people would be in Afghanistan but it couldn't possibly approach the numbers in Japan. Hell, they had people jumping off of cliffs rather than be captured by American soldiers.

So, my question is...what's the difference? What did we do in Japan that worked?

The only decent guess I can come up with is that Japan operated "top-to-bottom" in that what was said by the leaders pretty much filtered down and was followed by the populace. In Afghanistan, it seems as if every tribe and village operates independently and nothing comes from the top (i.e. Karzai). Am I oversimplifying my hypothesis?

Just looking for some education on the issue.
 
To me I suppose that the most obvious difference is that the Japanese authorities signed the surrender before any rebuilding began. We were not trying to fight a war and rebuild a country simultaneously.
 
Not 100% sure but I think you can look at the education level of the two countries first. Japan, highly educated, Afghanistan not so much, even in the 1920's 30's 40's Japan was a forward thinking nation vs. the nomadic state of Afghanistan.

Throughout Japan's history you have a stable leadership that stressed growth. Afghanistan not so much. I think that is one of your primary reasons.

Common Sense prevailed in Japan, Afghanistan has been beat down throughout history, not quite sure but what they regard as Common Sense is different then how we regard Common Sense.
 
Value of life is higher in Japan.

One example- Israel traded about 1,000 terrorists/arabs in exchange for one kidnapped soldier, Gilad Shalit. Can you imagine the idea of Hamas trading 1 Israeli soldier for 1 Hamas member?

They simply don't value life, they think it's an honor to die- and in Japan's case, while they also saw honor in death, they had just lost a generation of men and had lost desire to fight.
 
the biggest difference has nothing to do with anything the US did, but rather with the countries and cultures.

Japan was already a successful county with a reasonably advanced economy compared to the rest of the world at that time.
 
Good points.

I guess one of the differences that I can add is that Japan seemed to surrender as a whole. Like I noted above, it only takes a few extremists to disrupt a country. If, say, 100,000 Japanese citizens refused to surrender when their government did, they could have probably caused quite a bit of trouble for years - perhaps decades.
 
I suspect that every young Japanese man identified himself as "Japanese," while every young (fighting age) man living in Afghanistan identifies himself based on very small boundaries/bloodlines/tribal loyalty. There probably is no "Afghanistan" in their eyes.

Just speculation. Not an expert.
 
Japan was a modern, unified country that followed its government. Afghanistan is a backward "country" comprised of remote isolated peoples who are not much under the control of their own government let alone unified behind it.

Our best chance for success in Afghanistan was to leave the heavy concentration of Special Forces we had there in place. It was a Special Forces victory in Afghanistan which was achieved by the special training those forces have in working among a foreign people.

That best chance was lost when Turkey refused to support a conventional invasion of Northern Iraq. The Special Forces were pulled from Afghanistan to be used in the Iraq War. In my opinion, the loss of our best chance in Afghanistan was among the major costs of the blundering invasion of Iraq.

Japan and Germany were modern, unified countries who knew they were defeated. Further resistance after defeat would have just delayed the rebuilding which was the best thing for the common good. I don't know how much support guerilla resistance would have received from the indigenous population of those countries. That support is critical for resistance forces.
 
One big reason that the Japanese acquiesed was that their Emperor instructed them to do so...

The Japanese were VERY deferential to the Emperor, essentially believing he was divine...
 
As someone stated above, whatever faults Japan had it was still a "unified" country with a long history of being such.

Many middle eastern nations, including Afghanistan, still seem to be tribal societies that were actually created by european colonial powers to best suit their interests, not the interests of the local inhabitants.

Look at what happened to Yugoslavia, or better yet watch the last 10 minutes of "Lawrence of Arabia".
 
Afghanistan is a country on a map but in little else. It is a mish mash of differing languages and tribes and there is no central authority or binding agent.

Unlike Japan.

It is pre industrial. Unlike Japan was.

It is largely illiterate. Unlike Japan was.

People who grow up in a place with a large overlay of patriotism, like the US, have a hard time following the idea that there are places where such a concept does not really exist as we know it. Loyalty to family, yes. To tribe, yes. To chieftain, so long as he is delivering the goods. To the tribe on the other side of the mountain? Let's chop their heads off.

And they are a very conservative, tradition bound set of societies.

They don't get us and we don't get them.

And spending money trying to organize an army that will defend an entity that barely registers on their minds is a total waste of money. It was fighting tribesmen who wrecked the Soviet troops, not the Afghan army.
 
European colonial powers didn't "create" the tribes, but they did divide the land and designate borders, based mostly on what best suited their own interests at the time, not on what would have the best chance of being a stable independent nation decades later.

I believe Afghanistan was originally meant to be buffer state between British India and Russia; that is the only reason it exists as a "country" today.
 
For those wishing to bone up on the history of Afghanistan and the extent to which it was a pawn in the Great Game between Russia and Britain, read any standard history of that matchup to get an idea of the problems for those two countries and the continuing problem for any western country seeking to civilize the area.

We blew it when we decided to militarize the country by building up an army to protect it from itself.

roads and irrigation projects and schools could have done some to galvanize tribes into nations or at least buy some affection for us. God knows they need them in abundance.

As things stand, the average Afghan has about as much control over his place in the world as an antbed in the right of way of an interstate.
 
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