TLDR Trump loosed the dogs of war, screwed the pooch, and now gets to eat a dogshit sandwich. He won on day one and lost everything. Iran's regime literally changed — new Supreme Leader, wartime mandate, unified population — and the US is still bombing...
And the war part of Gulf war 2 was an obvious victory.
Really? What were the objectives? Kill a bunch of civilians and hand Saddam over to a lynch mob? Because the end state in Iraq was collapse, chaos and a massive increase in Iranian influence.
Wars are fought to knock down opponents. No war has ever had an actual goal of “make that country happy”.
As I said before, the war part of Gulf War 2 was a resounding success that ended the Bathist tyranny in Iraq. That chaos replaced it was not a failure of war fighting which might have been solved by more bullets and bombs, but rather a failure of the post-war peace.
If Gulf war 2 was a “loss” because it led to chaos and civil war, then WW1 was the biggest loss in history since its end led directly to.tne Nazis. Which i suppose is a reasonable philosophy., except that it would utterly neuter statements about the USA not winning many wars with “nobody else does either.”
Really? What were the objectives? Kill a bunch of civilians and hand Saddam over to a lynch mob? Because the end state in Iraq was collapse, chaos and a massive increase in Iranian influence.
You nailed it in one.
Wars are fought to knock down opponents. No war has ever had an actual goal of “make that country happy”.
As I said before, the war part of Gulf War 2 was a resounding success that ended the Bathist tyranny in Iraq. That chaos replaced it was not a failure of war fighting which might have been solved by more bullets and bombs, but rather a failure of the post-war peace.
If Gulf war 2 was a “loss” because it led to chaos and civil war, then WW1 was the biggest loss in history since its end led directly to.tne Nazis. Which i suppose is a reasonable philosophy., except that it would utterly neuter statements about the USA not winning many wars with “nobody else does either.”