A Short History Of Modern Japan... And Then A Shorter Look At U.S. Policy Towards Afghanistan

A few weeks ago New York offered a light feature that wasn't about the midterms, Japan Now Ruled by Gentle Metrosexual ‘Herbivores’. Short version: after the war, Americans retrained the obedient warlike automatons to turn away from sneak attacks on Pearl Harbor and Shanghai and divert all that energy into a focused plan to colonize the world through non-warlike economic competition. The side effects were a kind of cultural pollution that has the old self-styled samurai class ready to commit mass seppuku. Apparently, they're not keen on their progeny, who are "less optimistic, less ambitious and less willing to take risks. They are less likely to own a car, want a car, or drive fast if they get a car. They are less likely to pursue sex on the first date-- or the third. They are, in general, less likely to spend money. They are more likely to spend money on cosmetics." The birthrate is already down... and headed even lower.

To hear the analysts who study them tell it, Japanese men ages 20 to 34 are staging the most curious of rebellions, rejecting the 70-hour workweeks and purchase-for-status ethos that typified the 1980s economic boom. As the latest class of college graduates struggles to find jobs, a growing number of experts are detecting a problem even broader than unemployment: They see a generation of men who don't know what they want.

Japan earned its fortune a generation ago through the power of office warriors, the so-called salarymen who devoted their careers to one company. They wore dark suits; they joined for rowdy after-hours booze fests with co-workers; they often saw little of their families. These are the fathers of Japan's young men.

And no more willingness to sacrifice for the hive or the anthill or... the company. Imagine someone looking for a balanced life signing up as a kamikaze pilot. An inability, by whatever means, to mobilize the populace to action-- either as warriors or automatons or as anything that doesn't come naturally, presages a breakdown in the ability of small elites to dominate society at large. In our own country that day is far off. The elites seem to have everything down pat, as we saw last Tuesday.

They even manage to get people to sign up-- one way or another-- to go halfway around the world to kill and be killed. Here, take a quick look at what is expected to be Obama's next choreographed step against Afghanistan and then we'll take a look at how authority figures get people to do what they want-- and how some people have what it takes to refuse. Yes, yes, the Milgram Experiment... but first Afghanistan:

A December review of the Afghanistan war is expected to say the U.S. strategy is working despite increased violence and record casualties, and that a July 2011 deadline to start withdrawing can be met.

But General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, will say that since the addition of 30,000 U.S. troops was just completed in late summer, it will take more time to get a complete picture of how the strategy is working, analysts said. That could affect the pace of the U.S. troop withdrawal.

"There will be progress but a lot of ambiguity about interpreting it because of the late start to a lot of these offensives and the seasonality of warfare in Afghanistan," said Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who has advised Petraeus in the past.

Ahead of the review, U.S. officials have been offering more upbeat assessments of a war widely perceived as going badly for the United States and its NATO allies nine years after U.S.-led forces invaded to topple the Taliban for sheltering al Qaeda.

Petraeus has ordered stepped-up operations-- making greater use of elite special forces-- that have killed or captured hundreds of Taliban militants in recent weeks.

In late October, he said the Taliban's momentum has "broadly been arrested." But critics and security analysts say Petraeus is presenting an overly rosy picture.

"It is far from clear what impact these deaths, the rate of these deaths, and the prospect of more deaths are having on the calculus of the larger Taliban phenomenon and its senior decision-makers thinking," said global intelligence company STRATFOR.

A NATO official in Brussels expressed concern that Taliban commanders were being quickly replaced and that killing current insurgent leaders could mean they would simply be replaced by "younger, less reasonable" radicals.

OK, Stanley Milgram's experiment comes next. Watch it-- and remember, a government can't torture unless there are citizens willing to be torturers... for one reason or another. Where would you draw the line?