We had military governments in Japan and West Germany. In fact, Berlin remained under the control of the allies until the wall came down. The Germans used to reimburse us (Americans, British, and French) the costs for our troops and diplomatic personnel.
You don’t let a country you defeated dictate the rules to you. Israel ended up with Hamas in power in Gaza. The US allowed a Sunni to run Iraq, replacing a Sunni (saddam) with another Sunni minority government. It’s no wonder we could not get a agreement for status of forces. We were there to protect the Shia from the Sunni, as far as internal stuff. That left them ripe to pick by a Shia revolutionist.
Allawi was a Shi'a,; Ibrahim al-Jaafari was a Shi'a, and Nouri al-Maliki is a Shi'a. All the replacements for Saddam were Shi'a.
Ummmmm.......I already gave you Japan and Germany as examples of success,(how to do it) as well as south Korea. You saying they are failures?
Are they not allies today?
I fess up un the shia sunni thing...I got that backasswards.
But my premise is that we did not stay. We needed to stay and the same will occur with Afghanistan. Both are lost...complete waste of young lives and treasury.
By the way, we allowed the emporer to retain his title in Japan. In Germany, we had to get the Nazis out first, after it settled we began giving them their power back, slowly as we stayed and kept order. for decades.
Gotta go kbar...
Stay sharp.