The Nazis and Japanese wore uniforms that made it really easy to distinguish them from the millions of people that live in those countries. There isn't a bunch of military bases and airfields we can destroy to cripple them. There isn't infrastructure churning out guns and death machines. These are desperate people using desperate means to carry out their extremism, and no amount of killing is going to correct the problem. People try to draw lines between our struggle in the Middle East and World War 2 constantly, but the truth of the matter is this is nothing like World War 2. What worked then doesn't necessarily work now.
You keep saying the two wars are not the same. I say our response has been different, but otherwise they are similar. Our response is an unwillingness to kill civilians muslims. Our response has been lack of resolve to have plenty of troops available.
Take the Japanese. They committed atrocities in China that shocked the world. In the battle of Okinawa, the largest allied loss of life was from Kamikaze attacks on the ships standing offshore.
The Japanese were Terrorists with a capital T. Our response was a willingness to kill civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The results have been different; WWII a permanent and total victory, whereas the half-measure against Islamic terrorists are losing ground.
During WWII the US population stood at 160 million, and of that 16 million served in uniforms. During the immediate aftermath of hostilities in Germany, a program of de-nazification was followed. Every person was scrutinized, for those who might have Nazi sympathies.
We didn't sit back and say "they don't wear uniforms, so it is too hard to do."
In contrast, the US have tried to wage war against Islamic terror by half-measures. The total manpower levels require sending our troops back to multiple deployments. We wear them out, because there are not enough of them.
I do get where you come from. I could see how a troop these days could become disillusioned, when crappy politicians hold the military back from total victory.
I have a niece and her husband, that both served in the war on terror. Multiple deployments. I told him about my understanding of WWII troops. My niece's husband said he didn't think his generation could do that; they weren't that good.
Today failure in the war on terror is viewed as an acceptable outcome, since people don't imagine the consequences. Partly because so few have a connection to the war or the consequences.
In WWII we rationed rubber, gasoline, etc. We had blackouts, and the draft. The West coast feared attack, with justification.
It flows from the top. GW Bush started strong after 9/11/2001 but gradually fell away from intelligent, total commitment to victory. He listened to Rumsfeld say he could do it with fewer troops, for example--but that was wrong.
GW Bush could have said on 9/12/2001 that we were starting the draft up, because we were going to defeat Islamic terrorism.