• AcidSmiley [she/her]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      27
      ·
      1 year ago

      Have they won any war with boots on the ground since WW2 when they had the full support of the USSR and the UK, back then the biggest naval power in the world?

        • AcidSmiley [she/her]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          21
          ·
          1 year ago

          I absolutely do not count that one, unless we assume that “turn the place into a civil war economy and enable the formation of ISIS” is a valid win condition. Which is a stretch when they went in there expecting to turn it into an obedient vassal state like postwar Germany or Japan, which is something that Dubya’s administration seems to have seriously believed.

          • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            11
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            DC’s architects made their money off of rebuilding, mercenaries, and corruption. I’m pretty sure they count it as a win regardless of what ever humble pie the media made them eat for that brief period America pretended to care, back in… 2015/2016, was it?

          • PKMKII [none/use name]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            10
            ·
            1 year ago

            It only works under the very narrow criteria of “removing Saddam from power,” but yeah by any other metric it was a boondoggle of the highest order. A sort of, I got rid of the wasp’s nest in the attic, I just caused a five alarm fire in the process.

            • AcidSmiley [she/her]@hexbear.net
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              7
              ·
              1 year ago

              Absolutely. What worries me about Iraq is that it may have tought the US that they do not need to be successful, but that it can already benefit them when they just fuck shit up for real in a strategically important corner of the globe.

        • BeamBrain [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          1 year ago

          I think the first Iraq War is a better example, since they had clear goals (remove Iraq from Kuwait and completely obliterate its infrastructure) and achieved them in a short timeframe.

          • PKMKII [none/use name]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            7
            ·
            1 year ago

            I think the difference there is while it was successful in stopping the invasion, it’s also clear in retrospect that the neocons weren’t happy with that and wanted to march all the way to Baghdad. So the first one was successful in the abstract but a failure of the ideological project, and in the second they got what they wanted in the first place and got a failure in the abstract as a result.

    • Drug_Shareni [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      1 year ago

      Do remind me what were their victory conditions.

      To me they look like: destabilise the region, sell military tech, build bases, establish puppets, plunder resources, repeat.

      Everything else is just marketing

  • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
    cake
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    27
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Few things make me feel as much disgust in my bones like the kind of bloodthirsty wine cave warrior that wants to feel badass about the thought of vicariously watching the killing of people around the world through remotely controlled weapons.

    There’s multiple layers of alienation from the actual act of killing yet they savor it like it’s theirs, like it’s a fucking spectator sport. Then again, now it is.

  • SkibidiToiletFanAcct [none/use name]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    22
    ·
    1 year ago

    Lol, really trying to be an edgy racist with those queue haircuts.

    Also, its not saying anything beyond it’s better to have planes than not, since American training is full of hazing and abuse too. I’d prefer karate chopping cinder blocks to the whole hell week stuff. also Plaaf training should be similar to USAF since they recruit American veterans to teach dogfighting.