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Which wars has the United States lost?

Yeah, I think Iraq should be officially labelled a stalemate.

Yeah, but you think that the WAR 0f 1812 was a stalemate as well... they burned down the White House and the USA achieved NONE of its goals.
 
should never have been fought in the first place. My lord... what a waste of lives and money that one is.

Hear, hear. The whole doomed enterprise has become such an industry, though, that failure will follow failure and good money will follow bad.
Know what it reminds me of, this whole prohibition idea? Like transplanting a species from one ecology to another to try to control another imported species. Will we never learn such simple lessons?
 
Yeah, but you think that the WAR 0f 1812 was a stalemate as well... they burned down the White House and the USA achieved NONE of its goals.

The only reason there was not a clear victory for Brits-Canada was due to British concerns with Napoleon.
Otherwise parts of Maine and other areas would be Canadian now.
 
Who rules Vietnam right now?

That's a pretty good clue.

:lol:

The Chinese *initiate Vietnamese-Chinese flame war*

No, but we dumped way too much money in there, even though we won most every battle, it was a huge ****ing waste 'domino' effect my ass.
 
What about the "War on Women" *Initiate plz don't kill me module*
 
What we "could have done" is completely irrelevant. yeah - we could have dropper nukes on them. Just like we could drop nukes on North Korea, or Syria, or....

Tell me, how many lives were lost in the Vietnam War?
How many lives were shattered beyond repair from the Vietnam war?

Now tell me, for what?

What did the USofA gain from all that tragedy and loss?
What was the prize we won? What spoils went the the victor?

Well, first of all, are we a communist country? You see, when we fight pre-emptive wars, there are always people who believe that every casualty and every dollar spent was a total waste, but you have no idea how things would've looked if we would have just appeased the communists (and mainly the Soviets) instead. Communism was a major, major threat back then. The Soviets had killed millions of their own people, and they had nukes back when nukes were still relatively new and were scary as hell. Communism was spreading like wild fire even into our own hemisphere. So there was reason to go in.

Ever hear the saying "we can't lose unless we beat ourselves"? Attitudes like yours help lose wars, and we beat ourselves. And as far as the mental toll from Vietnam, you can thank yourself and the rest of those who believed that those who bravely attempted to put a stop to the spread of communism did so in utter futility. Communism is irrelevant nowadays and you seem to believe that if we would've avoided Vietnam that this outcome would've happened anyway, but you have no idea.
 
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Let's have a discussion about which wars we should consider the US to have lost.
We are going to simply exclude the Civil War from the debate since it's not worth getting into the semantics. Also exclude silly "the war on xxx" things like the war on terror.


In my opinion, it is completely obvious that the US lost the Vietnam War. That one goes without question.

Korea ended in more of a stalemate so I don't think that should be considered a loss, rather a draw if anything.

The less obvious ones are Iraq and Afghanistan. We definitely succeeded in the initial goal of defeating Saddam in Iraq, but the attempt to replace the regime with a stable democracy was obviously a failure. So I am undecided on my verdict for Iraq right now. In the case of Afghanistan, we might just have to say that the war is still ongoing. At this point, though, I think it's extremely unlikely the US will win.

So my tally is:
1 loss (Vietnam)
2 draw (Korea, War of 1812)
1 ongoing (Afghanistan)
1 currently undecided (Iraq)

Everything else was a win.

Anyone else have thoughts on this?

I would not directly say the us lost vietnam, rather they left because they could never win, and it would have been a never ending war with no gains, afghanistan and iraq seem to similiar in the never ending department.

1812 was definately a draw, america had homefield advantage, and had smaller faster ships and a better trained navy, while the british had a much bigger navy, on land america had the homefield advantage and again the british had the numbers. Korea was nt a draw but a truce, still in effect to this day which is why we still have soldiers in south korea, expecting at any time the north may break that truce and attack. essentially the korean war never ended, and could spark up at any given time, and has been that way well since the korean war.
 
The "USA" and the "United States Military" did not lose Vietnam nor will it lose the current ones, if that happens.
The "US Civilian Government" Lost us / Cost us the Vietnam War and is failing at the current one against ISIS....

The internal politics of why we lost the war does not change the outcome, though. We came in with a mission: prevent communist North Vietnam from conquering South Vietnam and creating a unified communist Vietnam. We ended up withdrawing, and North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam and it became a unified communist country. So yes, we lost the war. You can blame the civilian government or the internal politics or whatever, but it still doesn't change the fact that we lost the war. We completely failed our objective.
 
The internal politics of why we lost the war does not change the outcome, though. We came in with a mission: prevent communist North Vietnam from conquering South Vietnam and creating a unified communist Vietnam. We ended up withdrawing, and North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam and it became a unified communist country. So yes, we lost the war. You can blame the civilian government or the internal politics or whatever, but it still doesn't change the fact that we lost the war. We completely failed our objective.

Again I would say that it was not the United States that lost because the United States citizens were not behind that war ever...
The US Government was behind that war and tied the United States Military's hands behind their backs so that they could not win.
 
The internal politics of why we lost the war does not change the outcome, though. We came in with a mission: prevent communist North Vietnam from conquering South Vietnam and creating a unified communist Vietnam. We ended up withdrawing, and North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam and it became a unified communist country. So yes, we lost the war. You can blame the civilian government or the internal politics or whatever, but it still doesn't change the fact that we lost the war. We completely failed our objective.

Do you think there could've been a bigger picture, like stopping communism from spreading in general? Or do believe that if North Vietnam was the only communist country on earth that we still would've gone in?
 
Technically, the American's didn't "lose" the war of 1812 in the sense that they retained their territory, but the British achieved their goals and Canada remains a separate country to this day as a result.

The British/Canadians held Canada which was the main objective and prevented further boundary changes.

Ergo, the war of 1812 was a victory for the British Empire.
 
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Do you think there could've been a bigger picture, like stopping communism from spreading in general? Or do believe that if North Vietnam was the only communist country on earth that we still would've gone in?

That was the bigger picture yes, stopping the spread of communism in general. The military objective on the ground though was to stop North Vietnam from conquering South Vietnam.
 
That was the bigger picture yes, stopping the spread of communism in general. The military objective on the ground though was to stop North Vietnam from conquering South Vietnam.

Right, they failed that specific military objective but the bigger picture of stopping the spread of communism isn't as clear cut imo, which is why I don't consider it a total failure. Do you feel like our participation in Vietnam took the wind out of communism's sails at all? See, I consider Vietnam worth it and in a way a victory if we stopped the spread of communism.
 
Well, first of all, are we a communist country? You see, when we fight pre-emptive wars, there are always people who believe that every casualty and every dollar spent was a total waste, but you have no idea how things would've looked if we would have just appeased the communists (and mainly the Soviets) instead. Communism was a major, major threat back then. The Soviets had killed millions of their own people, and they had nukes back when nukes were still relatively new and were scary as hell. Communism was spreading like wild fire even into our own hemisphere. So there was reason to go in.

Ever hear the saying "we can't lose unless we beat ourselves"? Attitudes like yours help lose wars, and we beat ourselves. And as far as the mental toll from Vietnam, you can thank yourself and the rest of those who believed that those who bravely attempted to put a stop to the spread of communism did so in utter futility. Communism is irrelevant nowadays and you seem to believe that if we would've avoided Vietnam that this outcome would've happened anyway, but you have no idea.

If communism is irrelevant nowadays, how can you say that those who attempted to stop its spread did so in utter futility?
 
Well, first of all, are we a communist country? You see, when we fight pre-emptive wars, there are always people who believe that every casualty and every dollar spent was a total waste, but you have no idea how things would've looked if we would have just appeased the communists (and mainly the Soviets) instead. Communism was a major, major threat back then. The Soviets had killed millions of their own people, and they had nukes back when nukes were still relatively new and were scary as hell. Communism was spreading like wild fire even into our own hemisphere. So there was reason to go in.

Ever hear the saying "we can't lose unless we beat ourselves"? Attitudes like yours help lose wars, and we beat ourselves. And as far as the mental toll from Vietnam, you can thank yourself and the rest of those who believed that those who bravely attempted to put a stop to the spread of communism did so in utter futility. Communism is irrelevant nowadays and you seem to believe that if we would've avoided Vietnam that this outcome would've happened anyway, but you have no idea.

Do you honestly believe that clap-trap you just posted????

Do you think California would be scared of Texas, if Texas lost a decades-long war with freakin Delaware?
 
Interesting.
Don't really agree with Korea being a draw as the goal was to get PRK north of the 38th parallel and that was achieved. Technically we are still at war, under a ceasefire agreement. Similar to Desert Storm (Kuwait) in which the goal was simply to regain the territory lost.
Not sure why you have Iraq as currently undecided and Afghanistan as ongoing. We, the US, have lost people in both countries this year. Both are ongoing. And both will probably be loses.
We tried to invade Canada in the War of 1812 and lost. We also tried to take over the lands of what was called the Northwest Territories and we won. England failed to keep the US out of the Indian territories.
One could add Libya as a loss. And Syria as ongoing.
The best win was the Mexican War when we stole a Louisiana purchase sized chunk of land from Mexico.
 
Yeah, but you think that the WAR 0f 1812 was a stalemate as well... they burned down the White House and the USA achieved NONE of its goals.
There are historians who believe that the real War of 1812 was regarding the Indian Tribes of the Northwest Territories (Think Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, etc.) They were aligned with Britain and the US wanted them. And the US got them.
 
Who rules Vietnam right now?

That's a pretty good clue.

:lol:
Our goal was never to rule Vietnam. Our goal was to honor the agreements that we had with the government of South Vietnam. When the government of South Vietnam fell, the US left since the agreements were moot.
And the expansion of Communism happened to be stopped around that time.
 
There are historians who believe that the real War of 1812 was regarding the Indian Tribes of the Northwest Territories (Think Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, etc.) They were aligned with Britain and the US wanted them. And the US got them.

You could probably argue that the real losers of the war of 1812 were the Indian Tribes
 
You could probably argue that the real losers of the war of 1812 were the Indian Tribes
Yeah. I think that it was historian Howard Zinn who argued that the war of 1812 forever changed how the US treated native Americans. For the worse. Not that they were well treated before but after that Indian lands were simply lands to take
 
So my tally is:
1 loss (Vietnam)
2 draw (Korea, War of 1812)
Since the British torched the capital and our biggest victory at New Orleans came after the cease fire, I would move the War of 1812 more into the "lost" category.
I don't feel like we've lost any, we just decided to leave (except maybe War of 1812).
As for micro wars, Custer's war against the Northern Cheyenne and Lakota is a definitive loss. In addition, I think the confederation of tribes led by Tecumesh (Shawnee) also won favorable treaties from the US by force of arms before eventually being ground down in later wars.
 
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Let's have a discussion about which wars we should consider the US to have lost.
We are going to simply exclude the Civil War from the debate since it's not worth getting into the semantics. Also exclude silly "the war on xxx" things like the war on terror.

So my tally is:
1 loss (Vietnam)
2 draw (Korea, War of 1812)
1 ongoing (Afghanistan)
1 currently undecided (Iraq)

Wow, so wrong here. In reality, we lost 1, that is the War of 1812. And yes, we did indeed loose that one. The UK was distracted fighting France for most of that war, and never really took the field of battle against us. And we lost pretty much every battle during the war (other then one wafter the war was over), and we indeed sued them for peace. In military terms, that is considered to be a "loss".

Now for the others, let's cover them one at a time, in chronological order. And remember, what is important in any war is achieving your goal.

Now the Korean War, what was the goal? It was simply protecting South Korea from invasion from North Korea. Now where were the forces at when the war ended? Well, technically it is still going on (a big miss of yours, that is still an ongoing war believe it or not), but the DMZ is North of where the original border was. TO pretty much everybody, that constitutes a win.

Now in Vietnam, that is unquestionably a US military win. At the time of the Paris Peace Accords, North Vietnam was on the brink of crumbling, and they were the ones that sued for peace. And the US accepted the agreement in 1973, and agreed to pull combat forces out of South Vietnam if North Vietnam agreed to recognize the right of South Vietnam to exist, stop all guerrilla actions against South Vietnam, and conduct a unilateral drawdown of forces along with South Vietnam.

Well, we all know the outcome of that. South Vietnam agreed to the conditions, North Vietnam broke them, and in 1975 invaded and destroyed South Vietnam. Almost 3 years after the last US combat forces left. So how that is a "loss", I have no idea.

Now with Afghanistan, once again what was the goal? I seem to remember it being the elimination of al-Qaeda, and the Taliban as the ruling government. Now they are still fighting over there, but al-Quaeda is indeed gon, and the Taliban have not been in control for over 15 years. So once again, a win.

Now on to Iraq. Once again, what was the goal? It was the removal of the Ba'ath Party with Saddam Hussein controlling the country. Was that or was that not done? Simple question, if it was then the goal was achieved. Does anybody see the Ba'ath Party regaining control of Iraq in the next couple of centuries?

What you are confusing here is winning the war, with establishing a stable nation. Nation building is not the job of the military. Never has been, never will be. You might as well add in there Lebanon, since the US was involved there also, and it is still an unstable mess even half a century later. Or Haiti.

Now the goal for war is simply to destroy the fighting will or capability of the other side. And other then the War of 1812, we have done that every single time. But once that goal is completed, there are many more variables involved in what is to take the place. So it is not winning a war that is a problem, it is ensuring that the peace remains that is the real problem.

But do not confuse the two. And learn what actually makes a win, loss, and draw when it comes to a war. Like far to many, you are trying to pose a military question, but framing it in political wording. And even then, you missed at least one very big one, and recorded it as a draw when actually it was a loss.
 
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