• Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Did we really win? We went in there and killed a bunch of people but even today the country hates us. The truth is the US hasn’t won a war since WWII. In order to really win you have to make peace with the population after you take over. The US doesn’t do that anymore. We just kill and create more enemies.

    • quick_snail@feddit.nl
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      2 months ago

      I think the ones making the wars would consider it a win if they make a lot of money.

      In almost every war, the US extracted a lot of money/resources, not to mention the killings made by military industries

        • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
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          2 months ago

          That’s all very idealistic, but in real life, containment is often a legitimate war aim. And if you’re invaded, ending the invasion is often victory. Wars are not fought to make people stop being your enemy, and there are only a few rare cases of post-war reconstruction where that has been achieved.

        • kreskin@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Disagree, pattern of history shows that wars can end with both enemies still intact and both claiming victory depending on how they each define victory, both privately and publicly.

    • toddestan@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      If the goal of Desert Storm was to get Iraq to withdraw out of Kuwait, then it could be considered a success. There was no intent to make friends with the Iraqi people or remove Saddam from power. That was the second Bush’s mess.

      • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
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        2 months ago

        Yeah, that was the objective of Desert Storm: to force Iraq back to within its own borders.

        Bush Jr thought that was too narrow a goal and when he found a convenient though irrational excuse in 9/11, killed half a million Iraqi civilians in a pointless bloodbath. By comparison, the homicidal maniac Saddam and his regime killed a few thousand Iraqi civilians during his entire time in power (not counting the war of aggression against Iran, which led to about half a million casualties on each side).