What? Pretty sure Afghanistan was lost too?? Or are we using strategic ambiguity in new ways?
this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2026
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The way I interpret this is single-handedly lost the war. Afghanistan was over 4 presidents (Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden). The sloppy withdrawal by Biden was die to no planning and a treaty signed by Trump to do so by 2/29/2020.
Trump is the one who unconditionally surrendered Afghanistan. It's on him.
But still, not winning against Stone Age goat herders for 4 presidents... I don't know man, what was the plan? Bomb the desert again?
If that's the case, then Nixon didn't single handily lose the Vietnam War either.
But let's be real. The Democrat president who inherits this war in 2028 will be the one blamed for loosing it.
The sloppy withdrawal by Biden was a treaty signed by Trump to do so by 2/29/2020.
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It's not that he lost... it's not that he started it because putin told him to... it's not even that his moron running the "war department" is an alcohol addled butt sucking asshole...
It's because of all the goddam taxpayer money he threw DOWN THE FUCKING COMMODE on the death merchants. What? Did Raytheon need to clear out some old inventory?
Putin didn't get him to start, it was Bibi.
You yanks REALLY need to lose this one. Your noses need to be rubbed in it. You need to feel the SHIT you put the rest of us though. And you need to get seriously angry at the Israelis and rub THEIR noses in it. You need a big enough shock to CHANGE.
(Like I know most of the people on Lemmy are not Republican idiots. I'm obviously not talking about you personally, but about the «general public opinion» in the US, especially the Republican idiots.)
I'm sadly forced to work alongside some republican asshats, and let me tell you, they're fucking ecstatic about how the usa military is kicking Iran's ass. Reality has no bearing on them.
In America, we punish the incumbents. BoTh PaRtIeS have told their own constituents to fuck off; membership of registered voters is at 30% each. Independents are now 40% of voters.
Whoever wins the election tells the people who elected them to fuck off; so, we vote them out. That's it. The new election winner then tells the people who elected them to fuck off, and so on.
Examples: Biden runs with minimum wage increase as platform, wins, then tells everybody to fuck off.
Trump then runs with "no war" as platform; wins, goes to war and tells his voters to fuck off.
He will be replaced by a Democrat, who will then also tell their voters to fuck off.
Repeat ad nauseam. Neither party does what they are elected to do and are then punished, to be replaced by the other party that will refuse to do what they were elected to do.
We can't vote ourselves out of this, unfortunately.
He will be replaced by a Democrat, who will then also tell their voters to fuck off.
The real political innovation here is that the Democratic party is telling its voters to fuck off before the next election.
They don't have anything to loose. Another Republican president? Great! They can sit on their asses for four more years writing angry tweets about how offended they are while telling voters to fuck off. Democrats win? Even better! Sit on their asses while insider trading and taking billionaire tributes while telling voters to fuck off. What a great system we have.
I agree with the incumbent part, but exactly how was Biden able to pass minimum wage law but decided not to? It can't go in reconciliation and they didn't have the votes for it in the Senate.
They don't care. It's a video game to most Americans. That's what having oceans between you and the bombs does.
The US committed a war crime on day one, and Israel has been on a war crime spree since Oct 7.... if this turns into a world war, it'll be that Mitchell and Webb skit.... "are we the baddies?"
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No one's done that since Nixon? Would you call Afghanistan a victory? Although that was also Trump.
Hows our "Project for a new American century" coming along? Seems it wasnt as easy as just writing down all the things we lusted after and grabbing them via pure hubris.
7 wars and a movie... just missing the movie.
I'm sure they'll make a movie about how the war made them sad
Maybe they needed the ratings for the final war/season to be higher for the movie.
yes, inevitably casting "principled" god-fearing maga people as the real victims in all of this, who are always calm and dignified, and never ever wanted any violence, but the outcome was forced on them.... by muslim and woke democrat terrorists who were the real epstein pedophiles all along. We can have an AI write this movie in about 5 minutes. I bet Noah Wiley would agree to play Hegseth.
Daily Kos still exists?
Yeah, they're still sending out a newsletter and doing decent articles on their webpage but they're low on fundraising.
Did AI write this article? It repeats itself a lot.
um what? america has only won 2 wars against a guerrilla force of their own terf in the last 100 years.
In Afghanistan, Trump unconditionally surrendered to the Taliban, but left Biden to complete the withdrawal. Before that, Iraq was either a loss or a stalemate, depending on what the poorly articulated objectives actually were.
The last time the US won was WW2.
The US "won" in WW2 because they managed to pick the winning team. There was a significant pro-nazi faction in the country at the time and it wasn't really until Japan attacked Pear Harbour that they really picked a side and went all-in on it. Before that, they were fine with selling stuff to Nazi Germany, and Japan for that matter.
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The allies won WW2. The US alone would have lost.
If we make that distinction then we're looking at Spanish American war as their last win.
Well... I guess they won the American Civil War.
Half of them lost it though, shall we call it a draw?
The wars were won in both cases. Decisively.
Hearts and minds were not won, in either case. There is a good question whether the nationbuilding could even theoretically have succeeded, given how tribal and divided the countries were. IMO it was stupid to try in the first place, especially in Afghanistan.
We keep entering conflicts with no clear objective because our leadership lies about our reasons for entering the conflict. In both cases we had no hard evidence they were even continuing development of nuclear weapons.
We defeated their military and occupied their countries, but winning implies completing an objective successfully. When we exited Afghanistan the Taliban instantly took control. They completed their objective, they won the war.
Every $10 increase in crude translates to roughly 24 cents per gallon at the pump. So we're looking at 25 to 45 cents per gallon — baked in, structural, not going away when the war ends, not going away when the headlines fade, not going away ever.
Can we stop with this narrative that this is somehow a bad thing?
The price of oil has been too low. calculate the cost if externalities, and the price should be close to infinity.
Just stop oil.
Food prices are still tied to fossil fuel prices. This will cause a lot of very real pain, among the poorest in the world.
So yes, we need to get to net zero carbon. But there has to be a more humane way than unplanned cold turkey.
It's only cold turkey now because we haven't done it in the last 50 years.
That time has passed. It was supposed to be a slow transition since 1970s.
Now the only option is to just stop now.
And most of the world's food is produced locally. For those few heavily industrialized countries that chose to centralize their food systems to be dependent on fossil fuels, they have enough wealth to give free food to their poor populations.
And most of the world’s food is produced locally.
...With imported nitrogen fertilizer made from fossil fuel. And with farm machines burning imported oil. And transported even to local market using imported fuel.
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The number of trackers this site wants you to accept and load is insane. I know it's not that unusual these days, but fuck that, i'm not putting up with your clearly malicious interpretation of legitimate interest to see one article.
I think this article forgets how Trump effectively surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban the last time around.
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