musiclady wrote above:
[[ You do realize, don't you, that you could apply the same principle to both Germany and Japan after WW II?
We're still in both countries.
And we're still in Korea, stabilizing that region as well. ]]
Musiclady, I'm goin' after ya on this one.
We did not -- let me shout that out for emphasis -- DID NOT -- do in Iraq and Afghanistan what we did in BOTH Germany AND Japan after World War II.
In Germany, we not only defeated the Nazis militarily, but we completely "de-Nazified" the country, all-but "bleach it out of" the Germans.
Same thing in Japan. If I recall my history correctly, we not only forced the emperor to publicly renounce his "divinity", we literally handed them the "pre-written" constitution that now governs that country.
We not only conquered both of those countries militarily (utterly defeating and destroying them both), we literally destroyed them culturally as well, even [in Japan's case] destroyed one of the religious factions that had been warlike and a driving force behind Japan's imperialism (again, hope I remember that correctly). In both countries, we dismantled the core ideologies that had made both nations such enemies of the civilized world.
We did NONE OF THAT in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
What was one of the first things the newly-created postwar Iraqi government did? In writing their new constitution, they specifically made islam the state religion.
That's the equivalent of the 1946 Reichstag assembly making Nazism the "official" party of postwar Germany!
If we were to attempt "the equivalent" in Iraq (as we did in Germany and Japan), we would have gone in, installed a militarily-supervised government, outlawed the practice of islam, torn down the mosques and madrassas, and converted the entire population to Christianity. And then we would remain for 80 years to make sure islam never gained a foothold in that place again.
But -- we didn't do that.
Of course, you'll say that such propositions are impossible, impractical, can't be done.
So be it.
But one cannot compare what we did post-1945 to transform Germany and Japan with what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. No comparison, not even close, no way.
You can't defeat islam with today's politically-correct strategies.
Isn't going to happen.