r/AskReddit • u/Diptothaset • 5h ago
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u/disturbednadir 5h ago
We win almost every engagement, it's the 'maintaning an occupation' that's the problem. It's very difficult for an invading for force to do.
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u/IndyDoggy 5h ago
All other desert excursions aside, Desert Storm was an unqualified succes.
It bought a decade of peace to the area (excluding Israel/Palestine).
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u/BrewsWithTre 5h ago
What are you talking about? Engagement is different from war. By your term the last engament we won was the US intervention in Venezuela in January this year where the US had a goal and objective and did it. In terms of "war" Iraq is debatable and will be debated for ages. But the Gulf War was in 91(?) And was an absolute pummeling by the US and its coalition.
This post comes across as you being a young liberal teenager that is anti-america. I am saying this as someone who votes liberal but am not Anti-American
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u/juve86 5h ago
Depends on your definition of win. However you might be mistaken for why the us military is constantly involved in wars. That being said your idea of winning probably doesn't align with the long term goals of a us dominated world.
Think about what life would be like in the usa if china was running the world stage?
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u/blaze92x45 5h ago
We lost desert storm? Didn't know that
Same thing with Yugoslavia didn't know the Serbs won that conflict
Something with Grenada I guess we lost there too
Or in Panama I guess Norega kicked are ass and that's why he's in prison
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u/R_Harry_P 5h ago
I'm genuinely curious why you aren't putting Desert Storm and the invasion of Panama in the win column.
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u/PIK_Toggle 5h ago
Since I was born:
Grenada: win
Panama: win
Operation Ernst Will: win
Desert storm: win
Kosovo: win
Afghanistan: win
Afghanistan nation building: loss
OIF: win
OIF nation building: loss
Libya: win
Battle vs ISIS: win
Iran: TBD while acknowledging that the US has not sent in ground troops
That’s just off the top of my head.
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u/HueyLongest 5h ago edited 5h ago
America won an impressive victory as recently as January of this year. If you don't want to count that operation, Desert Storm was incredibly impressive. The second Iraq War was also a very decisive military victory even if if didn't accomplish much
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u/Sir_Gerald_Nosehairs 5h ago
Probably because the US could easily destroy them all.
It is just hobbled in a way many previous superpowers weren't, in the sense it tries to minimise civilian casualties. Nothing stopped it blanket-bombing the Tora Bora cave networks and the villages on either side that were hiding the Taliban, but it balked at the civilian cost, for one example.
It could drop a nuke on Tehran tomorrow and end the Iran conflict, but as above.
Same happened with the previous hegemon; the British Empire. Went from strapping people to cannons and blowing them to bits if they defied it, to being sickened by the acts of the Black and Tans and granting Ireland independence.
Whether this is the beginning of the end for the US in the same way it was for us, who knows. Maybe, maybe not.
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u/Waayco 5h ago
The usual argument is the same used in Vietnam and Iraq.\ We could have just leveled the entire place like we did with islands in WW2 but we chose ground forces and the baby weapons to kid glove the country we were invading due to that nations citizens being present.
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u/Asleep_Protection293 5h ago
Tell the people of Laos and Cambodia something about that ‚kid gloves‘ / ‚baby weapons’ approach. I seem to recall some tidbit about more tonnage of bombs being dropped per square km as in WW1/WW2? Also, chemical warfare (agent orange)? Interesting position you‘ve taken…
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u/Waayco 5h ago
Because that only includes bomb tonnage.\ We used artillery, that we have even more of now, to quite literally level entire island chains. Modern day tactics would probably use missiles over bombs unless the country has no air defense worth speaking of.
Also, it's more tonnage of bombs dropped there than Germany and Japan. We used a lot more than that across entire theaters elsewhere during WW2. We also came in very late to the war so we didn't have as much time as other countries to rack up a decent score.
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u/RubbrBbyBuggyBumpers 5h ago
I mean the same argument could be made for any conflict really.
We wouldn’t even be a country without France.
We wouldn’t have won ww2 without Germany trying some shenanigans with the USSR.
I’d say the only truly successful war we’ve fought was the civil war. But even then we didn’t go far enough
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u/headchef11 5h ago
Cope harder
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u/Impossible_Offer7988 5h ago
This isn't a cope,
It is objectively true ,
America during Rolling thunder could have used much heavier weaponry possibly even Nukes,
The CIA also wanted to go even further,
It was only limited by it's own population,
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u/triggrhaapi 5h ago
By engagement I think you mean war. Also we did win in the first Gulf War in the 1990s, but we also knew when to get when the getting was good. I only wish we hadn't fucked over the Kurds so badly.
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u/aboyfromharlow 5h ago
I think thr poster meant America hasn't won one without other nations helping.
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u/triggrhaapi 5h ago
Remind me how we won WWII without other nations helping.
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u/aboyfromharlow 4h ago
Never said the brits won it alone.
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u/triggrhaapi 4h ago
Brits? Don't get me wrong, American colonialism is a direct extension of British colonialism, but we're not British.
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u/triggrhaapi 5h ago
I have cracked so many books. I don't agree that we would have been stomped but we would have had a much much much harder time, possibly extending the war by another 5 years. However, Hitler and Stalin would have never been able to keep the peace indefinitely, both of their egos were far too big for that.
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u/23-1-20-3-8-5-18 5h ago
It's no different than a woman making fun of a man walking awkward because he's carrying something very heavyand then when he says 'well you try and carry it' and she can't even pick it up....
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u/ckn 5h ago
Didn't Reagan like cut all the education in the 1980s? That'd explain several things.
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u/Substantial_Army_639 5h ago
One thing it would explain is how OP forgot that we won WW2
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u/ckn 5h ago
WW2 was 81 years ago, which is inside OP's window, so it doesn't rebut him. Desert Storm does. Meanwhile the federal share of school funding got halved in the 80s, and you assumed OP is American. So we're both right, and you've demonstrated the education cuts better than I ever could
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u/Substantial_Army_639 5h ago
WW2 ended 81 years ago OP above said 85 years ago which would be 1941.
Curious what country substitutes the number 85 for 81.
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u/ckn 5h ago
Two replies, 15 minutes, and your total contribution is catching a typo in a comment that was defending you. OP handed you a claim so wrong it falsifies itself twice inside his own window, and your instinct was to fact-check the person correcting him. That's not patriotism, that's a missed participation trophy in reading comprehension. Take Desert Storm, it's the only win in this thread you didn't have to be given.
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u/ckn 3h ago
Everything I said stands unrebutted and your closing argument is a vibe check. Your concession accepted.
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u/Substantial_Army_639 3h ago edited 3h ago
Oh sorry you must be confusing Reddit with the Symposium the year is 2026, what year is it if you subtract 85 years from 2026?
I suspect this is why your boss is younger than you.
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u/ckn 3h ago
1941, correct, which is why WW2 and Desert Storm both sit inside OP's window and OP is wrong twice; that was my first comment before you started 'proofreading it'. We've agreed on the facts for four replies. What's left is the reflex: a claim you didn't read, defended because a flag was in it, now six replies deep over status instead of content. That reflex, a national identity any stranger anywhere can push after one page of profiling, is exactly what foreign influence ops meter and sell. You're not losing to me. You're the demo.
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u/Substantial_Army_639 2h ago
Thats an awful lot of projection. What facts did we "agree on" I pointed out that you can't do math and you keep insisting that this is some sort grammar gotcha despite numbers not being grammar.
And you assume this is coming from me as some sort of act in patriotism. I don't care if its about America, if some one said France has never won a war I'd correct them on that as well. Hell I wouldn't even call Desert Storm a win if we went back ten years later, fought the same regime which resulted in a few million dead and arguably left the region in a worse state. Sort of makes me think you might be British as I am pretty sure that was also their last "victory" and invading an island for raising sheep of course.
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u/Snorkellingisthelife 5h ago
Well, the fact that you can type this post is proof that American hasn't "lost" an engagement in over 85 years.
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u/Impossible_Offer7988 5h ago edited 5h ago
The American Military itself has a questionable reputation,
But the Americans have spend hundreds of billions of dollars on NATO to make sure that other Nation's in the event of all out war are defended,
America is by far the biggest contributor to NATO'S defense budget,
Not to mention the fact that without them, an F-35 wouldn't even be able to take off,
Entire defense systems in the EU wouldn't be able to function because so much of it relies on American technology and lines etc.
America has routinely asked it's allies to increase their defense spending, that hasn't happened
So America has chosen to insult their military spending and militaries respectively.
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u/TNShadetree 5h ago
The important thing is we bomb the living hell out of anyone attempting to build nuclear capability.
Why do they want to be nuclear capable?
So we won't bomb the living hell out of them.
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u/ForsakenPoptart 5h ago
We don’t really declare wars, so how can we win them? We annihilate lots of stuff and people pretty regularly.
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u/Robby_Digital 5h ago
If by "won" you mean they haven't erased a nation off the planet with nukes, then you're correct, they haven't won an engadgement. But they could.
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u/daithisfw 5h ago
OP, your premise is completely incorrect.
America has won many "engagements". Overall wars are tougher when the objectives are about nation-building and regime-change instead of more direct war aims or clearing territory.
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u/zzzz-1234 5h ago
i would argue they win almost every engagement. however, war is a geopolitical issue, much more than who wins a gunfight
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u/Diptothaset 5h ago
Also gonna point out it goes even further back if you consider it to be an engagement they started and saw to the end (is there any??) or atleast an engagement they were involved in from beginning to end (is thbere any??)
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u/psgrue 5h ago
An honest answer: you have to identify the difference between a military objective and a political objective.
The military is actually really good at establishing bases, maneuver, logistics, and maintaining a physical presence. Military objective complete.
The political system is really bad at establishing a local government willing to maintain that and run itself. Iraq, Afghanistan: “here you go, run your country” then political systems collapse unless the US stays there. Staying there becomes too expensive, then eventually say fuck it, going home.
Puppet governments, the “freedom of democracy” and all the other US-isms don’t override thousands of years of history in local politics.
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u/WookieeWarlock 5h ago
I think your premise falls apart at “haven’t actually “won” an engagement “
The modern U.S. has won probably 95% or more of their military “engagements”. In terms of individual engagements there are very few examples of the U.S. “losing”
Basically saying that we “win” just about every individual battle, but we have “lost” wars so to speak. Vietnam and Afghanistan are the clearest examples of that but we basically lost those wars to ourself because there wasn’t a clear overall goal and exit strategy.
Mogadishu is maybe one example of an engagement we “lost” but even thats technically debatable because we accomplished the objective, things spiraled, and we eventually were able to get out after suffering a lot more casualties than planned. But even so it was 18 US deaths to something like 500-1000 Somali deaths.
There isn’t any debate the U.S. military is the best trained, most funded, and most experience military force on the planet. And it’s not even close. Modern warfare is much more complicated nowadays however when military might isn’t the only variable that needs to be considered
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u/Dpopov 5h ago edited 5h ago
America has won most military engagements in every war it has been in.
The reason you think they lost is because they have failed to keep control over those territories and decide to abandon them. In Vietnam the US won every single major military engagement and the NVA/VC all but defeated, but political pressure back home forced the US to pull back from Vietnam.
In Iraq coalition forces defeated the 4th largest military IN THE WORLD in only six weeks. Our bombers flew deep into Iraqi airspace, at the time the most heavily defended in the world, and tore them a new asshole.
But eventually, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, they all resorted to asymmetric warfare which is notoriously impossible to defeat. Even the great Napoleon Bonaparte couldn’t defeat the Spanish guerrillas because you can’t defeat a guerrilla if you can’t see them. So… Yeah, our military is second to none. In a conventional engagement we could solo the next top ten militaries in the world and not even have the courtesy of breaking a sweat.
But asymmetrical warfare is a whole other beast and that’s what we, and every country in the world, has lost to. The Nazis to the Polish, French and other resistances, Soviets to the Afghan mujahideen, the US, France, and England to the VC, the French to the Spanish, the Romans to the Germans…
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u/ZombiePrepper408 5h ago
Occupation, nation building and political will power have very little to do with military prowess.
There hasn't been many lost engagements in the last 85 years.
I would bet the K/D ratio from US military vs every enemy combatant is astronomically high, especially after WW2.
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u/Due_Satisfaction2167 5h ago
People have a weird idea about “winning” wars.
Hardly anyone ever wins a war by total annihilation of your enemy to the point where they offer unconditional surrender. Most wars throughout history are ended by negotiation, not total defeat.
For whatever reason the world has decided that if the US ever negotiates an end to a war, that means the US lost the war.
The US is reluctant to commit ground forces to wars because it risks heavy casualties that are politically unpopular at home. It has a fantastically deadly military that produces some genuinely insanely lop-sided results in actual combat operations, but it’s also historically more-willing-than-most to sign a treaty and leave if the political calculus suggests it stands to gain more with a treaty than it does through continued military operations.
Trump is an aberration there, because he’s a moron who doesn’t understand how diplomacy, warfare, or economics works.
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u/Pocho_Azul 5h ago
“America” doesn’t insult other nations militaries. Individual Americans might do so sometimes, because of ignorance and insecurity, but the United States as a whole does not.
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u/Marijuana_Miler 4h ago
OP is referencing Pete Hegseth posting a photo of Canadian woman who are part of the Cadet academy with the text "🇨🇦 (this is real)." While it might not be the US themselves insulting, Hegseth is currently the highest ranking member of the US military so people are conflating the two together.
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u/solidmarbleeyes 5h ago
I think there’s a strong argument that we’re pretty good at exerting force and winning engagements, but struggle with the part that comes after. Afghanistan is a good example. From my understanding we had things fairly locked down against the Taliban while we were there but did not achieve the long term goals of nation building.
As far as insulting other militaries, especially our allies who have helped in our conflicts, well that’s just Americans being stupid and short sighted.
I’m just an idiot on the internet though so take my perspective with a grain of salt.
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u/Slestak912 5h ago
Tactically or strategically? How do you define “win” how do you define “engagement”?
In my opinion:
Tactically the Korean conflict was a loss in the beginning, a win in the middle and a draw at the end. Strategically it was a draw at the end.
Vietnam was mostly a win at a tactical level but a loss at a strategic level.
Operation Preying Mantis was a win both ways
Just Cause was a win in both (certainly at a tactical level)
Gothic Serpent is a weird one with a “win” at a tactical level and who knows at a strategic level
Desert Storm was a decisive win/win
Iraq/Afghanistan post 9/11 was a tactical win strategic loss
Venezuela was a tactical win strategically it remains to be seen
Strait of Hormuz, I have no idea with the amount of propaganda from both sides.
The American military is more than capable tactically, but the political will to win/not offend, generally having no clear objective, and lackluster public support is a huge disadvantage.
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u/Ranos131 5h ago
I don’t think “engagement” means what you think it means. That word is typically used to refer to individual battles. The US has won a lot of those even in the last year.
Even if you were intending to use the word to refer to a war, then we have also won plenty of those in the last 85 years. There was a big one called World War 2 which we won just over 79 years ago. We also won two wars in Iraq recently and even more recently, a proxy war in Syria.
So not sure where you’re coming from but you are 100% wrong.
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u/Riker_Omega_Three 5h ago
Wars are not fought for wins and losses outside of the World Wars as those were specifically fought against world domination
wars are fought to control natural resources or exert control over certain regions
The conflict in Iran is about controlling the flow in crude oil and taking away a competitive advantage that china had
Nobody actually cares about winning or losing
Russia wants a specific portion of Ukraine that is very VERY rich in natural resources.
They don't care if the win or lose
They just want that piece of land
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u/Diptothaset 7m ago
Over 65% of commenters are from USA and there’s basically no two comments that agree which are wins/losses. Most just argue semantics about war vs engagement, mostly with other Americans (checks out)
Also, I probably should’ve just used the term “war” instead of engagement but engagement sounded cooler. Also when I googled “how long ago was ww2” I must’ve gotten the start date rather than when it ended. Even if we give you that one, we’re gonna acknowledge that you sat out and then basically sucker punched Japan for sucker punching you. If Japan wasn’t regarded you’d have literally sat that one out too. I’d argue the allies would likely have won, just with way more deaths and a completely different Eastern Europe
Imagine if this post had global reach instead of 65% American.
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u/OwnLife9448 5h ago
Desert Storm, Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom.
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u/CatAfraid2244 5h ago
All that freedom, yet the US is ruled by a scammer cult leader lol
I think China should intervene
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u/Lerched 5h ago
We're the only nation to ever detonate a nuke. Does anything about our political leaders make you think we wouldn't do it again?
America doesn't lose a real conflict (read: not a dick-measuring contest over oil); everyone involved does. via mutual destruction.
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u/MrManslaughter 5h ago
People tend to miss this point. We haven’t had a war since ww2 where there was a real threat to US citizens, thus have not felt the need to pursue “total war”-type measures to achieve victory. Sure we could absolutely destroy Iran with nukes, or even an all out ground assault, but we’d lose millions of lives and the American people wouldn’t support it.
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u/Lerched 5h ago
a fact I think really drives it home is the US lost 1,000~ more soldiers in the iraq war than we did civillians in 9\11.
and that was after a direct attack on US soil.
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u/MrManslaughter 5h ago
And by contrast, even our losses in ww2 were very light compared to others. We wouldn’t be willing to lose the ~500k we lost during ww2 for oil in Iran lol.
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u/Icy___Barca 5h ago
Militarily, there’s nothing to insult. America is playing chess while 90% of the world is still figuring out checkers.
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u/EllieLikesButtStuff 5h ago edited 5h ago
Hubris and an old dumb orange man pedophile
Edit: spelling
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u/Nederlander1 5h ago
(I) We have nukes, any war you may consider us having lost, could’ve easily been won with a single command of: “make that area uninhabitable”
(II) We’ve spent decades protecting the Europeans; allowing them to focus their budgets on healthcare and welfare rather than military spending - this is now changing but would never have happened had the US not had a dominant military.
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u/740buckeyehunter 5h ago edited 5h ago
If you haven't noticed America insults at anytime, for any reason. With little to know factual support. Unfortunately one man is the voice everyone hears.
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u/LysergicRico 5h ago
You have to remember that there are 2 Americas. The loudest one is the dumbest one. The other one is well aware.
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u/Formal-Teacher9245 5h ago
You might think there are 2 if you live there, but I can guarantee that the rest of the world doesn’t see it that way
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u/TrumpsBoneSpur 5h ago
FYI, America isn't insulting anyone's military. We just happen to have a dementia ridden russian asset in charge who says things like that to get people to forget that he raped children.
FDT
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u/SlomoLowLow 5h ago
They seem to think that if they spend the entire GDP on the military that it makes their military better than others. Normally there are adults in the room that could actually make that be the case. Unfortunately there are children in charge of the military and no one to keep them in line. So instead we blow billions of dollars to kill school children and lose wars to dudes in flip flops.
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u/safton 5h ago
You must have a very strange definition for "engagement".