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Isn't it amazing that the US losing a war against the Taliban is considered a victory for Biden, because he's pulling the troops out. Just like in Vietnam, they pillage, murder and rape a country for a few years and then leave when they lose and call it a victory
Idk Grenada, Panama, or the Gulf War? All of which barely count as wars and the later we had insane amounts of help and still botched in the long run
Like, it depends on your goals, right? Private industry surrounding the Iraq/Afghanistan occupation successfully pilfered trillions of dollars of wealth from the American public, galvanized public opinion to capital's benefit for two decades running, and dramatically expanded the scale of the MIC both at home and abroad.
We didn't find and defeat the Final Boss of either country or install a permanent neoliberal loyalist regime from which we could expand our empire into Iran or Xinjiang. So it was an international geopolitical defeat.
But from a domestic perspective, how many careers have been made running on some kind of hawkish platform or by reneging on a "moderate" dovish platform? And from an economic perspective, it was like winning the lottery every day for twenty years.
Well the strategic goal I guess is a win initially, but the insurgencies have soundly won in the long run. However I wouldn't say a permanent neoliberal regime would be the measure of a win, the strategic objective was regime change and securing the natural resources, the latter of which we have not really succeeded at 20 years later. Not expanding into Iran is not a geopolitical defeat, but we still did lose cause we fail to hold our objectives
However I wouldn’t say a permanent neoliberal regime would be the measure of a win, the strategic objective was regime change and securing the natural resources, the latter of which we have not really succeeded at 20 years later.
Taking Iraqi oil off the market for 20 years, while the US becomes a major exporter, has been a solid consolation prize.
Not expanding into Iran is not a geopolitical defeat, but we still did lose cause we fail to hold our objectives
The folks that came out of the Bush Admin were greatly enriched, the staffers all went on to higher office or had children who climbed the ladder behind them, and - particularly after Trump - they're all remembered fondly.
How was this not a huge win for everybody involved?
Yes they won, but the US military did not. There is a difference between people lining their pockets, and militarily winning. Like the Nazis become entrenched in the western intelligence and got to do much of what they wanted, but that doesn't mean they won WW2
Yes they won, but the US military did not.
Guys like Tom Cotton and Dan Crenshaw leveraged military service into political careers. Others transitioned to private security, be it Blackwater or the local PD, or took their GI money to college.
The top brass have all landed on short lists for civilian admin posts - Lloyd Austin heading up the Pentagon, Kelly as Trump's chief of staff - or cushy board positions - Mad Dog Mathis at Theranos, for instance.
Contractors banked. Civilian support staff banked. The MIC banked. Which American military folks walked out of Iraq worse off?
Like the Nazis become entrenched in the western intelligence and got to do much of what they wanted, but that doesn’t mean they won WW2
The Nazis were running Western Germany and the UN, by the 1960s. They were gobbled up by Operation Paperclip and resupplied/reinforced under Operation Gladio. The ratlines to South America gave them an entire continent to conquer. They had won the Cold War by the 1990s and begun re-colonizing Africa at the turn of the 21st century.
Yeah but that's not the same thing as winning the war. People leveraged Vietnam to get elected, profiteers still made off. But that doesn't mean the US won that war. Confederates secured their legacy and the Klan got them their concessions back but the Civil War was still won by the Union.
Continuing on past a war and getting a lot of what you want in the long run is not winning a war. The Nazis failed to take the Soviets, their primary objective, that's a loss for them. Surviving does not mean you won
Yeah but that’s not the same thing as winning the war. People leveraged Vietnam to get elected, profiteers still made off. But that doesn’t mean the US won that war.
The failure in Vietnam relative to, say, Korea or Japan, limited who could ultimately profit from the region in the future.
But the repeated efforts to recreate a WW2-like wartime economy signaled that this was only a fringe benefit. The war itself was the prize.
Confederates secured their legacy and the Klan got them their concessions back but the Civil War was still won by the Union.
The Civil War was a dumb political misstep by the Confederate States, as they had historically gained far more from the Union than it cost them to participate. Even then, what the Confederates lost on the battlefield was recovered in Congress and the White House. They rolled back Reconstruction, resecured their land, re-conscripted their human chattel, and reclaimed governance of their home states.
The war itself was a disaster, but the survivors persisted and ultimately triumphed for another century or more.
The Civil War was not resolved at Appomattox Court House. It simply transitioned to a guerrilla war, and then a propaganda war.
Similarly, Germany's colonial ambition did not begin and end under Hitler. It spanned centuries, and ultimately came to fruition long after The Treaty of Paris supposedly ended the war. Once again, conflict merely transitioned, this time into Cold War Era intrigue and assassination. The conflict continued by other means.
Yes but those are still losses. You are literally saying "well they made off decently in the long run so their losses don't count as losses". a war is a war. You getting what you want eventually does not mean the martial conflict is changed. Those are all losses in which the loser got off easy or kept going in some form. By your logic literally no conflict but total extermination is a loss. The USSR eventually fell, so the whites won the civil war.
And no the war ended at Appomattox, the fact that the fight continued does not mean the war didn't end. The Confederates got their citizenship back, but that doesn't mean they won. If they won the CSA would exist still. Esoteric hot takes are not the same as literal surrenders and peace treaties. A class can win but their nation loses. The nation state and its profiteers are not the same thing
Yes but those are still losses.
If you grow wealthier and more powerful over time, I don't consider that a loss.
a war is a war. You getting what you want eventually does not mean the martial conflict is changed.
Pyrrhic victory isn't a victory. If you kill all the other guy's soldiers, but he ends up with the power and you don't, you didn't win.
The USSR eventually fell, so the whites won the civil war.
The USSR fell at the hands of the anti-commumists that mobilized against it at birth. A seventy year struggle culminated in their defeat.
Similarly, white supremacists have run this country lock, stock, and barrel from the day Colombus and his successors landed through to the modern political moment. The Civil War and Reconstruction were brief interludes that failed to break the stride of a movement spanning centuries.
Lots of schlubs died along the way, but their deaths are always sacrifices that folks in power have been willing to make.
If you want to talk about real sustained victory, look to China and Cuba and Iran. Hell, even France has a better track record than the United States when it comes to obliterating dynasties.
You are conflating ideological conflicts with wars. The USSR being defeated does not mean they lost the civil war. That is a ludicrous conception of what a war is. Well the sun will one day explode so really no one has won a war before.
Class conflict undergirding everything is NOT the same thing as literal martial warfare. That's just not what those terms mean, no poetic dramatic framing is gonna change the material reality of what a war is.
The Civil War was over who would rule Russia, the Soviets won through and through. Falling down the line does not change the objective victory in the war.
Also since we seem to love not defining terms; who is "you" that is growing wealthier? A class and a country are not the same thing. Profiteers make off no matter who wins, but wars are fought ostensibly over specific goals and come to a conclusion when both sides cannot or will not fight in that specific armed conflict. The upper class makes bank no matter what, but there is still a losing and winning side unless it is unresolved. If you are fighting over who will rule and someone wins and rules for about 7 decades, they won that war. They may lose ideologically in the long run, but wars are not measured in the esoteric.
You go to war with an objective, if that is achieved then you won. Future conflicts are future conflicts. Napoleon eventually being defeated does not mean the French Republic lost all the wars of the coalitions retroactively. Napoleon's line reclaimed the throne again later, does that mean he won the Napoleonic wars? No he lost, he died in exile his empire lost its holdings, and France would never achieve his set goals again. Larger conflicts exist within history, but they don't somehow change the material context of a war. We do not divide wars like that, no one, no historian, no materialist, no Marxist, no one.
Good study of war aims and goals and how we define them. https://books.google.com/books?id=ETDtAwAAQBAJ
Time is relative or something, idk I couldn't remember if it was the war in Afghanistan or Iraq that was 20 years old
"Afghan airfield" its the motherfucking Bagram itself, its like if they called Saigon "Vietnamese town" they orderly retreated from.
AP continues proving their reliability and nonbias.
We're repeating Vietnam, but without even pretending we've learned something.
Can't wait till we do this again in Malyasia or Peru or some shit.
You know we are through the looking glass when the real headline is funnier.
so they seem to be withdrawing for real. even if they leave some contractors and the puppet government, that won't last very long without continuous bankrolling. I wonder, is this really the beginning of the end of the US empire? is money finally running out at least for the unprofitable occupations? If so, what's next?
Its the end of the war on terror (symbolic at least) as the new cold war rises.
yeah the china propaganda has become increasingly relentless, so a move towards turning china into the big bad state enemy is clearly happening. but i just can't see any scenario where the US wins this. how are they gonna force countries across the world, including their own 'allies' in europe and especially asia, to kill their own economy? At this point, the more sanctions they hand out the more countries are driven towards china more than anything. Not to mention that the propaganda is complete nonsense and everyone with a brain can see that. they got nothing.
New cold war but by end america is the one who balkanises ha ha yes ha ha
I really wonder what their plan is right now. Keep the country destabilized to hamper Belt & Road? Hope that the government will somehow grow strong enough to fight Al Qaeda?
this really the beginning of the end of the US empire?
isn't that Blackwater/Academic/(whatever) working for China now?
The American mercenary behind Blackwater is helping China establish the new Silk Road
As China pushes ahead with president Xi Jinping’s ambitious $1 trillion One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative—which reimagines a historic trade network as an overland Silk Road Economic “Belt” and a Maritime Silk “Road”—protecting Chinese business executives and other personnel and their rapidly growing investments in the region is more important than ever.
Enter Erik Prince.
I don't know how much of this is substance and how much of it is hype. This Quartz article reads like something out of a J. Peterman catalog. But they're mercenaries, so I'm not shocked that they'll work for anyone. Might as well call out Blackstone group or Apple Inc or Bechtel for contracting with Chinese-backed domestic firms and denoting this as End of Empire.
If anything, this is a point in favor of American Empire. Guaranteed that Prince's organization is joined at the hip with :cia: and others, and more than happy to sell info on the Chinese to the US or the UK or the Israelis or anyone else.
Chinese businessmen and bureaucrats needing to outsource security to an American-based company run by well-connected American politicos does not reflect well on the Chinese state.
