this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2026
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Enshittification

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[–] TargaryenTKE@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

You seem to be forgetting (or deliberately downplaying) a few crucial details about the history of the American military, so let me briefly shed some light on how they 'lost' all those conflicts you mentioned. In chronological order:

Korea: The US joined a war in force (on the other side of the world) as South Korea was literally on it's last legs, pushed the frontlines all the way back through BOTH Koreas right up to the Chinese border, and only had to retreat to the current DMZ because China (who shares a land border with NK) sent 3 million troops into the quagmire. On average throughout the whole war, UN forces were outnumbered at least 2:1 at any given moment and they still would've won if not for the world's most populous nation deciding they really didn't want the US on their doorstep (for good reason). It's a lot easier to supply your troops if they're only a short train ride from some of the largest population centers on the planet, as opposed to 5000 miles away. Even then, both sides experienced major logistical problems throughout the conflict, with almost every action after the first year being reduced to a stalemated war of attrition. Around the same time, Truman's approval rating had dipped to an astonishingly low score of 22%, one of, if not THE, lowest presidential approval rating on record (according to Gallup). Needless to say, he was replaced in the election of '52 and Eisenhower tried to work out a peace deal asap. Then in early March of 1953, Stalin died and while the Soviet leadership fought over who should replace him, they didn't really care about Korea anymore. Which meant they stopped supporting China, which meant China stopped supporting North Korea (at least to the extent they had been previously). Even though the Koreans still cared about the conflict, the superpowers on either side definitely did not anymore

Vietnam: Ignoring all the critical history leading up to American involvement in Vietnam (aka how the French already fucked up the region before we even got there), the US entered a situation where they were entirely unable to utilize most of their strengths and instead had to fight/bomb mostly (though not exclusively) within their 'own' territory. Keep in mind, that even though we refer to it as a war (and for all intents and purposes it was), LEGALLY speaking, we only ever sent peace-keeping forces; we were supposed to be cops, not conquerors. Also worth keeping in wind, Vietnam (the combined, modern nation) is roughly the same size as the western coast of the US, from Seattle all the way down to Los Angeles, that's a LOT of land to endlessly patrol, again, on the other side of the Pacific ocean. And this isn't even getting into the other inevitable problems that arise from fighting an insurgency, especially one where few speak the native language and even fewer are eager to learn. Throw in the equatorial heat, political turmoil back home, and the increasing frustration/desertion rates of the rank and file, and at the end of the day the only thing that made sense was to leave.

Afghanistan: Yet another insurgent war, yet again on the other side of the world, yet again in a surprisingly large nation (roughly the size of Texas) with an exceptionally harsh terrain (almost the whole nation is part of the Hindu Kush mountain range, an offshoot of the Himalayans), except this time you can't even take a boat there; the only real way in and out is through the air, a true logistical nightmare. Add in the fact that Afghanistan was already incredibly decentralized and that its people had been fighting either foreign incursions or each other (or both) pretty much nonstop since at least the mid '70s and it's no surprise that the Taliban and their allies retreated to the countryside (or occasionally across borders) and started using insurgent tactics. They were not, and never have been, just "a bunch of goat herders" as you casually dismissed them. Eventually, the US found and killed Osama bin Laden, who was the main objective behind the invasion in the first place and so, naturally, began making plans to GTFO. A lot of ideas were thrown around and eventually Trump fucked it all up by basically giving the Taliban whatever they wanted, NOT including the 'legitimate' Afghan government in the peace talks, then essentially forbade the military from doing anything except the most bare-boned self-defense actions. We went in with no plan other than "Get Osama" and everything that occurred after his assassination was essentially bad improv but on an international stage

Iraq: I'm not sure where you got the idea that we "lost to a bunch of goat herders" in Iraq too. We fought them out of Kuwait in the Gulf War and beat them badly. Then we invaded Iraq proper in 2003 (for reasons that were admittedly pretty self-serving) and beat them even more badly. Hell, it only took about 3 weeks from the beginning of the war until Baghdad fell and major hostilities ceased (temporarily). Then another insirgency popped up once it became clear that the coalition forces didn't go in with an exit strategy other than "Get Saddam" as well as a few high-profile disasters/fiascos. But even still, once some semblance of order had been restored and the framework for a new government was established (no matter how shaky both those were in hindsight), troops were removed less than 10 years after the initial invasion. They accomplished their mission, and even though there were definitely some fuck-ups along the way, there was nothing left for them to do at the time. Eventually ISIS became a problem in the region, and US troops entered Iraq again but that's even more complicated and to-date they're a mere shadow of the regional powerhouse they were 10 years ago

Iran: Tbh I'm getting tired and I'm still hazy on a lot of the finer details involving the recent US/Iran conflict, especially since the situation continues to develop even as I type this out, but I think I can sum up the loss suffered by the American military in just one word: Trump

In every conflict listed above, the biggest reason why American troops left/'lost' is extremely simple: the war had lost its popularity with the American people and they elected the candidates who were more likely to pull troops out of a conflict that most people didn't approve of in the first place. The Department of Defense is the largest single employer in the entire world, with around 1% of the nation's population working directly for the DoD in some form, as soldiers, beauracrats, or whatever. Like it or not, but practically every American knows someone who worked/served in the military at some point in their lives. These conflicts ended because the friends and family of those people wanted their loved ones to come home, NOT because 'our military lost'

[–] HasturInYellow@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Did you know that Loas is the most bombed country in history, and it happened during the Vietnam war? They were not even officially participating.

[–] TargaryenTKE@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

Yes I did, Cambodia too, I just couldn't find a way to fit that into my analysis. Also, prior to those bombings, NK was the most heavily bombed country, especially during that two year stalemate with almost every city being completely destroyed

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

What pisses me off about the Iran War with this is that the media, leftists and pretty much everyone is foaming at the mouth to declare the power of the US military as having passed, the Iran War being proof of it, but all my life warhawks have been talking about imminent war with Iran and never has the conversation in serious circles ever responded with a narrative that this was something the US military could do successfully.

I distinctly remember my mom making the comment when I was growing up that if war ever did happen with Iran they would just blow up all the US military bases in the region because there were way too many exposed bases with massive amounts of infrastructure that could never be defended adequately in a million years... and my mom isn't some military intelligence expert, she is just a normal mom.... so I really can't fuckign stand this narrative it is utterly ahistorical and completely distorts the reality of what caused the Iran War to happen and why it can never succeed.

It has been recongized for decades that the geography makes the kind of military operation Trump is trying to do futile. Even before drones the strategic calculus was obvious, Iran would mass attack distributed vulnerable assets rather than try to sink a US destroyer or aircraft carrier that was far harder to get past the defenses of, what would be the point when there are warehouses all over the region without any effective air defenses to speak of at all?.... that are critical to the operation of those destroyers and aircraft carriers....

I get that people want to live in a world where the US military isn't frightenly more powerful than any other military in the world... but we don't live in that world yet. If people don't like that, they are going to have to evolve past the belief that war is something that can be dealt with at a distance with drones and is not a professional skill and practice that has to be studied academically. The fact that the US military didn't lose a destroyer and have a magnitude more aircraft shot down when trying to completely saturate Iran with bombing sorties should be a warning sign to the rest of the world that while Trump is a dumbass, the US military does not fit the narrative of obsolescense that everybody is embracing so quickly.

One only need to look at how foolishly the left and others reacted to the Venezeula helicopter attack operation that was stunningly successful (in a tactical sense, strategically it was stupid, illegal and pointless), nobody had anything to say about that other than that this must be the last time that would work "bEcaUse dRoNes".

The Iran War is a failure because you cannot exert political power by bombing people from the sky especially when they geographically control one of the most important chokepoints on Earth, not because the US military isn't leagues ahead of any other military on the planet.

The reason this pisses me off is this kind of attitude feeds into thinking that Europe and others don't have to take the US military's dominance seriously, they don't have to evolve and try to create their own multipolar alternatives, they can just conclude attack helicopters are obsolete and stick their fingers in their ears..