Local Resistance Quotes
When the American troops invaded Okinawa, the individual Japanese soldiers and civilians would not surrender, even when completely surrounded and out numbered. Surrender was culturally dishonorable and the Japanese had been told by their leadership that if they did surrender the Americans would kill them anyway. Almost all the Japanese died and the United States forces had an astoundingly high casualty rate—37%. Truman was fearful that there might be hundreds of thousands American casualties in the subduing of the Japanese mainland. The atomic bomb solved that problem.
The Russians had invaded Afghanistan and, like the earlier invaders who had also failed, they did not understand the people or their culture. (See {634659}). They tried to impose a centralized Communist government, not realizing that the Afghanistan people were not experienced with any kind of central government. There was some tribal structure but that was mostly a traditional consensus process. Most Afghan men were the “kings” of their own families and did not respond to any other governance though they can be nfluenced by tribal leaders, warlords, and imams.
