As I expected (at least according to this article), it's not that we're having a hard time, it's that we've merely forgotten:

Six months before, the world had cheered as the statues of the dictator came crashing down. The Americans had seemed heroic. But now things were going very badly. The occupation was chaotic, the American soldiers were hated and they were facing threats from the surviving supporters of the dictator, whose whereabouts were uncertain.

Germany had only a little experience (through a glass, and darkly) with representational government, and Japan had none. Both countries' infrastructure had been laid to waste, literally ashes on the ground in Japan's case.

Iraq's not like that, but we don't have millions of soldiers to sit on them with either. It's not as good as we want, but I firmly believe it's nowhere near as bad as it seems.

Via On the Third Hand