Yes, and we achieved total surrender before we began an occupation and rebuilding.
Iraq is small potatoes and easy in comparison. But you have to have a presence to do the job.
It would not be small potatoes to get Muslims to surrender. To think it possible without a near total genocide is the height of ignorance of Islam.
Getting muslims to surrender is impossible? Hmm.. don’t seem to recall full scale war for years between us and Egypt under Mubarak or Jordan nder Abdullah or Kuwait or Qatar or Dubai. Seems that contrary to your view muslims can be in political alliance with the west.
One thing that Germany and Japan had was a sense of order and civility ingrained in their societies and the people still had a desire to return to it.
The mideast doesn’t have a history of civility ingrained in the people. They have a history of brutality that is like mortar of the bricks that make them. Men brutalize those they see as lesser men, all men brutalize the women, women brutalize women they see as lesser women and all the people brutalize the children and the children brutalize each other.
I do a lot of online work for a couple who travel all over the world. They call Dubai the fragile glass diamond of middle eastern civilization. They say its a facade to attract western dollars but in the shadows of the skyscrapers is the same brutal middle east.