I think it’s worth remembering that the greatest capability of the US military isn’t killing people; that’s relatively easy. Its greatest ability is being able to establish a fully working Burger King anywhere on Earth within 24 hours, which betrays its unmatched logistics might.

Any military can kill people if it has equipment in the right place, but few can deliver a box of any cargo you want anywhere on the planet with a moments notice. Battles are won by tactics, wars are won by logistics, etc.

I wonder what the USA's win/loss ratio is since the cold war, because I'm under the impression it's not great. Or at least, I just figure if we actually won any wars in the last few decades surely I would have heard about it. I say this without any sarcasm though: the 24 hour burger king deployment thing does make me feel irrationally proud of my country.

@aeva tricky to define "war" in that window (and in the Cold War) but I assume it's very bad because winning a "war" means it's over and you can't do any more profiteering so

@SnoopJ ok so like yeah on some level it's a trick question because wars are devastating tragedies and framing any outcome as "winning" shits on the memory of everyone who died, but I was thinking in fairly superficial terms along the lines of if a mugger pulls a gun on someone, did the mugger come away from the incident having accomplished any of their goals going into the incident at all?

@SnoopJ ok so like yeah on some level it's a trick question because wars are devastating tragedies and framing any outcome as "winning" shits on the memory of everyone who died, but I was thinking in fairly superficial terms along the lines of if a mugger pulls a gun on someone, did the mugger come away from the incident having accomplished any of their goals going into the incident at all?

@aeva oh no I mean a trick question inasmuch as the number of "wars" pedantically is zero from the perspective of "you have to declare a war" (which is stupid in modern context, but)

but yea I understood you as meaning a less pathological sense of "war"

@aeva oh no I mean a trick question inasmuch as the number of "wars" pedantically is zero from the perspective of "you have to declare a war" (which is stupid in modern context, but)

but yea I understood you as meaning a less pathological sense of "war"

@SnoopJ I'm really wracking my brains here. The only two widely televised US military "victories" I can remember since I've been old enough to pay attention to these things are GW Bush landing on an aircraft carrier in 2003, and Osama bin Laden getting shot in 2011

@SnoopJ @aeva well, we’ve lost all of the philosophical “wars” we declared (poverty, drugs, terror), at least if you take them at face value.

@c0dec0dec0de @aeva only from the nation's perspective. huge W for arms industry

@SnoopJ and like it's not like I go out of my way to fill my head with government propaganda, quite the opposite really, but it's a somewhat common occurrence for people to try to convince me the necessity of war / solving problems with violence / etc when it comes up that I'm a devout pacifist, so like I feel like I would have heard of something by now and I'm really weirded out that I can't think of anything

@aeva you might say that the contradictions are heightening

@SnoopJ@hachyderm.io @aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place I mean, if I had to pick a winner of all the wars and and military conflicts I've seen play out in my lifetime that the US was involved in, I would start a list that begins with "Halliburton".

Cause I think that's it. If the entire history of European and US meddling in the middle east and other places hadn't already convinced one that 'violence is a great way to shuffle the pieces on the board and that's it', well, the post 9/11 history of Iraq and Afghanistan...

While I am Very Loud and blow off steam publicly, I genuinely think no strategy out of these types of situations can be achieved without building something. And a nation state can't build a society in the way that people need; it can enforce one, or perhaps reinforce one, but, well... anyway. People have to build it.

I wonder what the USA's win/loss ratio is since the cold war, because I'm under the impression it's not great. Or at least, I just figure if we actually won any wars in the last few decades surely I would have heard about it. I say this without any sarcasm though: the 24 hour burger king deployment thing does make me feel irrationally proud of my country.

@aeva the US has been pretty good at the war part of war and godawful at the nation building part after from what I've seen of recent history.

Desert Storm 1 and the war(s) in the Balkans went about as well as can be expected for the areas from what I can tell. Iraq 2 became a disaster pretty much immediately after the us "won" and drove Saddam's government from power. It's pretty clear that the powers that be were completely blinded by ideology and naked greed.

@aud @SnoopJ that's the the-purpose-of-a-system-is-what-it-does angle and you're not wrong, but that wasn't quite the assignment

@aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place @SnoopJ@hachyderm.io ah, yeah, no, you're right, sorry. I knew that wasn't what you're asking (re: Halliburton)... my actual answer to your question was there (I think, or at least, I tried to, anyway), which was "no, none of them".

I get that "victory" is a subjective thing but I'm pretty sure I'd say basically all of the military actions the US has taken (that I can think of) have been failures, and usually not because of unit strength or combat tactics but because of completely misguided reasoning and long term planning. Even Bin Laden: yeah, he's dead. And.. what did that actually accomplish? etc, etc. I'm not crying any tears over him or anything, but... well, he wasn't exactly in power or capable of much by that point.

I think a lot of things are likely to involve, or end in, violence, but I am also highly suspicious that it is capable of achieving "victory" except in very specific circumstances. This probably starts touching on "just war" theory and all that, now that I think about it.

@aud @SnoopJ that's the the-purpose-of-a-system-is-what-it-does angle and you're not wrong, but that wasn't quite the assignment