@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

@SnoopJ@hachyderm.io @aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place (which is, you know... I feel like I am agreeing 100% with all your positions and morals here, if I'm not mistaken?)

@aud @SnoopJ I'm personally of the mind that war is the failure case of civilization, and a lot of things have to go wrong for it to happen. Violent conflict never starts with ", and now there is war". Wars are something we should collectively and universally be ashamed of.

@aeva @aud @SnoopJ this conversation is pushing a lot of my buttons and I have Thoughts, but first and foremost let me get the most important thing out of the way: thank you for using "wracking" correctly

@aeva @aud @SnoopJ next though, I did a thread about this: https://mastodon.social/@glyph/114040633044614624

@glyph @aud @SnoopJ i love this framing that war is basically a contest over who can maintain a vertically high functioning society the hardest while trying to push over their neighbors'

@glyph @aud @SnoopJ it's like the complete opposite of hollywood war propaganda films

@aeva @aud @SnoopJ well that's really my main point: that's kinda what *WWII* was, that's what a global existential conflict between developed powers with strong ideological commitments is, but it is not what "war" has been historically and it sure as shit wasn't what the US wars in Korea or Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan were. Germans could accept an armistice, (mostly) renounce naziism, and stay in Germany, where they were, being ruled by other Germans; the war could be "won" and end

@aeva @aud @SnoopJ You couldn't have an armistice with the concept of self-rule, have the Vietnamese stay in place, to be ruled by the French, and promise that all future generations would be satisfied with the terms of this arrangement. You definitely couldn't have that kind of surrender *after the French already gave up*. So the problem with the US is not so much that we "lose" wars, as that our conflicts are not even legible to our war machine any more, and haven't been for a century

@aeva @aud @SnoopJ the closest we got to a real "victory" in the last dozen or so conflicts was in Iraq 2, and that's because it looked the most like a WWII-style conflict. For example, de-ba'athification could be the same kind of qualified success that denazification was. The jerks are still around but they are mostly prevented from being *that* kind of jerk any more, and will be for maybe 75 more years.

@aeva @aud @SnoopJ (Not that I am saying that Iraq was anywhere _near_ as justified as US participation in WWII was, or indeed that we should not look critically at Dresden and Nagasaki as hideous and unjustiifed war crimes that should never be repeated in an otherwise on-balance utilitarian positive effort)