The government of North & South Vietnam that I'm speaking of was France.

Acknowledged on the undercount of U.S. casualties in Iraq. It doesn't change my conclusion, though.

There's a sibling comment by delecti that's making the point that I'm driving at: what is the goal of war? Is it regime change? Is it to sell arms? Is it to kill people? If it's regime change, war in general is a remarkably ineffective way of doing that - it's pretty rare that the victorious powers get the government they actually want, otherwise we would never have had to fight WW2. If it's killing people or feeding the military-industrial complex, the U.S. was pretty good at that in all the wars listed.

Incidentally, Vietnam is currently one of the most capitalist countries on Earth. So politically, the communists were defeated. All we had to do was let them govern the country for 15 years and everybody realized they didn't want communism.

> The U.S. "won" Korea, Iraq, Vietnam, and Afghanistan in the same sense that they "won" WW2 - those countries were bombed back into the stone age and the existing governments fell.

Now you are saying:

> The government of North & South Korea that I'm speaking of was Japan.

> The government of North & South Vietnam that I'm speaking of was France.

Which completely contradicts what you said before, and is even more wrong.

Japan was firebombed pretty ruthlessly. McNamara openly stated that he would have been tried as a war criminal had the US lost the war. Here is a list of 67 Japanese cities that were firebombed with their destruction % and their US size equivalent:

http://www.ditext.com/japan/napalm.html#google_vignette

Source: The Fog of War (Documentary)

I guess this all depends on one’s definition “bombed back into the Stone Age”. I’m sure descendants of those that lived in Dresden might argue that they, in fact, were indiscriminately bombed to the point of ruin.

Guess technically, 'stone age' is hyperbole. They didn't literally have to climb back up through a bronze age and steal age again.

But point stands, they were severely crippled.

Well, yeah. And it's not exactly a technical term. Don't get me wrong, the strategic bombing was very destructive and killed a lot of people. The way I interpret the phrase is that bombing a country "back to the stone age" means destroying their industrial production. And strategic bombing didn't do that. Germany and Japan's GDPs did not crater; their production of military hardware increased through 1944. I'm sure the bombing kept it from increasing more, but that's not what the phrase implies. When the Allied armies entered Germany in 1944 their opponents were armed with guns and tanks, not bows and spears.

Vietnam ended in US defeat, and French defeat before that.

Afghanistan ended with US / NATO defeat and the Taliban taking over the country.

The Korean War isn't over yet technically, all we have there is a cease fire. Stalemate, nobody surrendered.

The US won the second Gulf War, Panama and some smaller stuff I am too lazy to look up.

The “clear and internationally acknowledged” criteria for a 'loss' is being caught on camera while the last soldiers evacuate and the enemy takes over.

So technically Vietnam and Afghanistan are losses. Because of the video's.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_conflict

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/12/30/asia...

edit: to be clear, you don't dispute that the taliban has retaken the country from US forces right?

They’re inherently different and the only way to “””win”””(which is a loaded term with wars against insurgents. We accomplished important strategic goals in Vietnam before leaving the country to self determine) is to resort to tactics employed by folks like The Butcher did in Cuba.

The US won zero strategic goals, Vietnam was reunited by force under the communist North. The US goal was to orevent exactly that. Nice spin so, calling Vietnam a defacto strategic victory for the US.

And Afghanistan, seriously? Before, anti-Talobam forces controlled at least parts of zue country. Nowy the Taliban are in full controll after they over ran Kabul following a hasty retreat of NATO forces from the country, that is as clear cut a loss as it gets. Had the US led coalition left after Bin-Laden was killed, one could have declared a victory. By staying and tuening the whole affaire into a foreign occupation without clearly defined goals, the US-led coalition could only loose. And they did.

That’s completely false. A large strategic goal of USA in Vietnam was to show strategic partners and allies the extent to which USA was willing to go for its commitments.

> And Afghanistan, seriously?

I have no idea what you’re asking. Vietnam and Afghanistan were simply not real wars in the traditional “win-loss” sense for USA; Afghanistan moreso than Vietnam.

Also note. There were 4x as many deaths from suicide. If we really cared about soldiers, this would be the number one story every day.

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/military/kil...

Over 7,000 U.S. service members and over 8,000 contractors have died in the post-9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

Over 30,177 U.S. service members and veterans of the post-9/11 wars have died by suicide. Coalition partners have died in large numbers: approximately 177,000 uniformed Afghans, Pakistanis, Iraqis, and Syrian allies have died as of November 2019.

Do you think that wars are not political? A political win is a military win.

Korea was a proxy war between the US and China (i.e. Communism). The US wanted a foothold on the mainland and to put a demonstration of the virtues of Capitalist Economics in the Communists' back yard, both of which it got in the form of South Korea. If the US hadn't been involved, "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" (i.e. North Korea) would have rolled south with China's backing and "Korea" would have been a single communist country.

Without China's involvement the opposite would have happened. China was well aware of this and did not want a capitalist economy sharing a border with it -- Berlin Wall kind of problems -- so they weren't going to stop supporting North Korea.

Which is the kind of situation that makes unconditional military victory close to impossible. China just keeps giving North Korea assistance, most of the casualties are North Koreans rather than Chinese and the North Korean leadership won't surrender as long as they have China's backing because it's not a democracy so staying in power is the only thing their leaders care about. "Unconditional victory" would effectively have to be a military victory over China.

At the time the US had nuclear weapons and China didn't, but China had half a billion in population even then, and they too were a non-democracy whose leaders cared more about staying in power than dead citizens. The US could have won militarily if they were willing to kill several hundred million people. It's probably best that they weren't.

And it was largely the same for the other proxy wars. Unconditional victory would require victory over not just the nominal enemy but the ones propping them up. Hence Cold War.

Could they really? Would the nuclear-armed Soviet Union idly stand by and watch US commit nuclear holocaust against it's close neighbour? They wouldn't. Would US allies back them in a war that turned into genocide? Unlikely.

So no, they probably could not have done that because they would not risk escalation into WW3 where most allies abandon USA.