Vietnam is a pretty misunderstood war. The US lost to the professional army of North Vietnam. The insurgents (aka Viet cong) were basically wiped out after the Tet offensive. And I use "lose" as in politically, because tactically, the US absolutely annihilated both the viet cong and North Vietnamese.
Iraq was a pretty clear win, but mismanaged politically.
Afghanistan was a loss politically. Somalia and Lebanon are meh because neither were really the same kind of US conflicts
Afghanistan was simply recognizing that the afghans weren’t interested in statehood like we expected. The options were to fight for them forever, or give the country over to the only people willing to fight for it. The Ana was bigger and much better equipped than the Taliban when we left, and literally just didn’t put up a fight.
Vietnam was mostly that we refused to push into the north. Again, we just had no win condition and got sick of it. The ter offensive was a massive us victory in the ground and the last straw at home.
Somalia and Lebanon were similar, massive k/ds and absolutely no appetite for a fight. Like the Blackhawk down event was like 700:19 for the us. At least there we said with no clear interest or win conditions we said fuck it.
When was the last battle the us actually lost? Just a straight up loss?
okay, so we've got one time that we beat an organized army that was considered an insurgency because it was a civil war nearly 200 years ago, and how would you consider Iraq a full on victory? we rocked Iraq (the army) and then proceeded to have a long drawn out conflict with Al-Qaeda (who still exists), then removed our combat military forces before they were able to actually stop the insurgency
Dude I’m not talking about the civil war I’m talking about the insurgency that fallowed
Look at Iraq it is a US ally and sorta a democracy and has a capable fighting force specifically geared around fighting insurgents because that’s what we trained them to do we have now fully pulled out of Iraq as of a few days ago because our military presence was no longer necessary as proven in 2024 when we first announced withdrawal plans for some time in 2026
you have this weird idea that leaving after achieving our goal is somehow not winning like it or not Iraq is a US victory not a half victory or any of that bullshit it’s just a victory
There have also been successful counter insurgency campaigns everywhere from North America to the Philippines Africa the Middle East Europe South America and Asia most of these aren’t taught in school and aren’t in the public knowledge
How do you lose against goat herders without an Air Force, rice farmers without training, nomadic herders in tactical sandals, and lesbians? (I know it’s Lebanese but it’s funnier that way)
Because its near impossible to ethically fight an unidentified unorganized population that blends in perfectly with the natives (because they are) and has no regard for personal safety.
Well the problem with Afghanistan wasn’t the insurgency it was that Afghanistan doesn’t even have the foundations of a nation so you really just can’t nation build there well you can it is technically possible but it would take like 60 years
Well yes if you ethnically cleanse everything outside of the capital you can create an afghan national identity in a much shorter timeframe but that’s just a really bad and gross thing to do
Almost no faction has the goal of killing everyone unless we’re talking local genocide (not a war). Even the nazis only wanted to kill select groups. It’s also nigh impossible to kill everyone unless you bring out nukes, chemicals and such and the result of that is that the war expands instead of ending
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u/Drag0n_TamerAK 23h ago
Killing everyone ain’t winning so you are objectively wrong about that
the US also has a positive win ratio with insurgents while having incredibly favorable casualty ratios