Japan was already a highly literate, secular, capitalist society when nation building started. And they're still not really a democracy (they only recently chan

Japan was already a highly literate, secular, capitalist society when nation building started. And they're still not really a democracy (they only recently changed governing party for instance, or take a look at their attitudes to criminal justice). The US has had one foot out of the door of Afghanistan since day one. In Japan the US wanted an ally against the communists. Rebuilding was important. In Afghanistan, the US had no such need. So we didn't bother. You can build nations (eg Japan). It takes longer when you're working from a rougher starting place. I don't think these are unreasonable points of view. Nor were they novel before Sept 11th 2001. I should say the coalition or nato rather than the US for a lot of the above. Plenty of other countries followed along on an obvious bad idea.