Why does America keep losing wars?

[Rali_hates_Mondays]

It's amazing that America doesn't have an impartial record of victories, considering its position in being the most powerful economical, militaristic, technological and industrial power in the world. Why does it keep losing wars? Even worse, some of its wars have resembled fights between an elephant and a mouse. Take the Vietnam War for example; against a third world country with ill-equipped peasants, victory should have been swift for the Americans. Except in this case the elephant ran away from the mouse, as they withrew in a humiliating defeat.

Also take the Korean War of the 1950s. Noone really lost the conflict but then again America didn't win it. Why did it end in an anti-climactic peace treaty? Again North Korea was (and still is) a pretty weak and feeble power that America should have easily conquered.

And today we have the conflicts in Iraq and the War on Terror, in which there seems be little sign of imminent victory. You can call the conquest of Iraq a success, but the same wouldn't be said in maintaining that conquest. The anarchy in Iraq shows no sign of dying down and, with or without the prescence of Allied occupation, it seems that Iraq is on the way to complete political disintegration.

 

[mega]

N. Korea had china behind them, also it was a UN exercise so the UK was there too. N. Vietnam had a reason to fight.


We won in Grenada...



http://www.geographia.com/grenada/

 

[james1200]

we keep losing wars because we're arrogant and stick our noses in things that don't concern us. think about how you feel when you watch a bully go after someone? you wanna fight the bully. we're bullies who try and impose our will on country after country. so when we attack, we radicalize the population of the country we attack, whether it's iraq or vietnam and they fight us to the death, just like we would if some foreign power invaded new york for example...we'd fight them in the streets to the last man. and then we act all confused...."duh...we're only trying to bring you democracy and help you heathens" we say...we'll never learn.

 

[caddymac]

It is because the US Government does not want us to win. They have created this mess and the rest of us have to pay for it one way or another. 911 was staged by the government and like so many other things they give us a big story to cover it up.

All they do is lie to us!!!! Look at all the stuff they do and they would put the rest of us in jail for most of it. We are heading to a ruling class and they are taking away more and more of our FREE RIGHTS and we are letting them do it.

 

[james1200]

don't blame the democrats for this...they had nothin to do with the idiotic republican foreign policy of the last 5 years. that's all on the neo-cons and their lunacy. the dems didn't have the numbers in either house to do shit...

and we deserve to be humiliated...our unchecked arrogance is about to get checked by a united europe and especially china, which rivals us in military power and is about to surpass us economically.

 

[JayHew]

The US is in a watershed period of time with much confusion of purpose, will and total lack of political leadship. It is the political lack of any conviction about anything except money and power that has this country in a bit of a funk. It will be settled out eventually and when it is and there is a rededication to the true principles of a free people, much will change.

Do not underestimate the American People, to do so is at your peril. Do not confuse what has happened over the last few decades as a total break down of the will of the people. This will not last much longer as there is an anger growing in the heart of the populace that is neither for the Right or Left and are sick of the BS coming from each. A ground swell will happen and a balance achieved that will last for a long time. Once done, the heart and mind of the American people will once again be focused on what is best for the country and the world as a whole.

When that happens, most will again be astonished by the resilence and depth of the USA.

 

[Oriental1986]

Maybe because they're over confident. Maybe it's coz they think that are it and no one can harm them. Maybe they think thay can take on anyone easily coz they are the most powerful country.

 

[belamy]

Must be an European virus, and all that Spanish population isn´t helping

 

[douseiai]

did we not win the persian gulf war? which was to drive iraq out of kuwait? i mean i'm not sure... but... i think we won....

as far as the world wars are conserned... america won WW2 in the sense that we took out a country if i remember by ourselves while the rest of the allies were fighting germany... then we came and helped with that... our war with japan was won and then with our allies the war against germany was one....

vietnam we lost not much more to say on it...

korea in a sense we won mostly because we didn't lose... we got a peace treaty we didn't exactly lose... if a peace treaty equates to loseing then wow thats new to me

revolutionary war... we won with the help of the french but we still won...

french and indian war... we won i think the british hepled but we still won...

war with mexico... i'm pretty sure they leave us the fuck alone now j/p

in a sesne we did win at iraq because we destroyed their government in 2-3 weeks... now we are dealing with putting the country to peace and trying to get rid of the insugency and rebels who do not like the new order that we are trying to build...

*shrug* keep in mind your only at war until a goal is recognized... in korea we wanted peace because we didn't want to deal with china... so treaty and therefore didn't lose... WW2 we wanted to make japan stop... we did... declaring war does not mean take over or conquer the country nowadays... its just to get some goal accross...

 

[belamy]

It's amazing that America doesn't have an impartial record of victories, considering its position in being the most powerful economical, militaristic, technological and industrial power in the world.

Mental power.

 

[pjlikesporn]

The last war the U.S. won was WWII because there were clearly defined enemies, good national leadership (even though it is now being revealed that Americans were manipulated by our government), and the objective was clear.

Woah woah woah there!!

The USA never won WW2. The allies won the war. Good triumphed over evil - there is no one country which won the war. Dont let Hollywood cloud your judgement or understanding of history.

Actually, I'm not realy sure whether than post is funny, or truly sad.

But, it's clear that the Hollywood myth-machine has been very successful in its re-writing of history.

Give the guy a break, boys. HTY clearly wasn't asserting that the Allies' victory in WWII was entirely due to the US or that the US fought the war on its own. The thread topic is entirely about the US, and HTY's post was about differentiating certain wars in whicht the US was involved from others. Read in full, the post makes no such assertion that the US solely won WWII.

Perhaps he would have been more accurate to say "The last war in which the US was on the side victorious . . ." or "The last war the US did not lose . . . ." But semantics aside, his point was cogent. Your responses take us from actually trying to answer the thread's issue to simply and contentiously jumping on whatever inaccuracies we can find--no matter how much we take the words out of context nor how inconsequential the impact on the question at hand.

 

[Soilwork]

It's truely sad how little Americans know about their own history.

 

[pjlikesporn]

However im fed up to the back teeth of Hollywood re-writing history.

It's truely sad how little Americans know about their own history.

I took history in college. I saw Pearl Harbor and Titanic. Don't even try to tell me they weren't balls-on accurate!

 

[Oden_grey]

Ok... I think the number one reason why America lost the Vietnam and Second Iraqi wars was because the rules we operate under were incompatible with the way in which the enemy fights.... if that makes any sense. In the Vietnam War most of the fighting seemed to be isolated guerrilla warfare throughout central and southern Vietnam. The Vietnamese rarely surrendered when assaulted to defeat and continuously attacked regardless of their chances of winning making them far more dangerous than the United States ever imagined. The fact that civilians consistently aided regular army compounded the situation by making it difficult to find friend from foe. I think eventually the Vietnamese launched an effective military and psychological war against the invading Americans that ultimately lowered morale, stalemated victory and caused us to withdraw. I think withdrawing from that situation was ultimately the right thing to do. Regardless of our numbers there and our technology we were being slaughtered because in guerrilla warfare, the home team ultimately has the permanent advantage... and nothing short of a nuclear bomb would have provoked surrender. Interestingly enough, I think if we had not used a nuclear weapon on Japan in WWII, a similar situation may have ensued because of the extreme intensity and military prowess of Japanese warriors.... ultimately turning the final days of the war into a costly war of attrition.

In the present Iraqi war presents a new problem for regular armies... urban warfare. The very fact that our military operates in units when the enemy may be just one person among hundreds with a wireless bomb control certainly puts the advantage on the insurgent side. The insurgents are pretty much picking us apart because our military so often travels in groups. Regardless of firepower, they are able to kill more of our soldiers effectively before the start of each battle than we are. And after most battles, the insurgents that escape retaliation simply slip back into the crowds and go about their normal daily business (probably purchasing groceries, praying, etc.). Certainly the fact there is no readily identifiable regular army makes things worse. An American military unit could be asking for directions or for information and ultimately get lead into a marketplace ambush by a seemingly "good" Iraqi samaritan.

I think I'd like to compare the way the U.S. is fighting in Iraq now to the way the British fought America during the Revolutionary War. The methods used by the British in fighting wars was antiquated compared to the guerilla and surprise tactics Americans used much of the time. That among other things lead to the embarrassing defeat of the world's foremost superpower in one of its own colonies.

I think ultimately the United States will have no choice but to withdraw from Iraq because we no longer have the capability of fighting insurgents effectively... unless we begin using their tactics to blend into the Iraqi masses rather than sticking out like a redwood in the dessert. Indeed, our presence there only makes Iraqis angry enough to join the insurgency, turning this into yet another bloody war of attrition. My fear is that after we withdraw, the current Iraqi government will be slaughtered as the new Iraqi theocratic leadership purges the entire country of western influence and then becomes a possible ally to Iran. At the end of the day we will have two nations with the capability of funding terror across the world and we will not be able to stop them because neither China nor the United States will have the gall to turn off their oil taps (and ultimately stop Iran's and the new de-Americanized Iraq's ambitions), because our economies need free-flowing cheap oil to run.

 

[unclaimedblessing]

War is hell.
None have ever been fought particularly fairly.
In the French & Indian War, the British & French both bribed Native American tribes to massacre their enemies.
In the Revolution the British and Colonists did the same thing.
Neither was conventional warfare.
During WWII Yugoslavia was divided amongst various opposing partisan factions that did as much harm to their own population as the occupying Axis Army.
There also were resistance fighters from Norway to Italy,from France to the USSR.
Unconventional warfare is really nothing new.
Our military leaders need to rethink traditional warfare tactics to confront the threats world wide as they exist today.
We need greater international cooperation against all terrorist threats.
History is just that...history. We need to focus on today and our tomorrows.

 

[naked gent]

Oden I agree with your Vietnam analysis but in the case of Iraq the situation should never have been allowed to develop the way it did. Had we been willing to maintain order with our own army or the Iraqi army we would not be where we are today. (although an Iraqi army made up mostly of sunnis would have posed its own problems) Once order is lost its not so easy to get back.

As to the topic of the thread I think there are two reasons america keeps losing wars. First we never fight on our own territory and whenever one fights with their back to the wall they fight harder.

Second as a rule wealthy democracies are not very good at producing fighting soldiers. The way they win is by having more stuff to fight with and simply outlast the enemy. In the american civil war the south fought better but the north had more stuff and thats why they won. In Europe in WWll much the same thing happened. We didn't outfight the Germans but we did outlast them. In the field the undemocratic Russians fought as hard as the Germans and without them the war may well have had a different outcome.

The Russians lost 20 million in WWll and its a fair question to ask would the western democracies have taken those kind of losses and still keep fighting.

 

[troyboy]

We aren't winning these wars because they aren't true wars. Vietnam and Iraq have no defined enemies and no defined goal. These were wars invented just to keep the US military industrial machine going. Watch this move and it will reveal all http://www.sonyclassics.com/whywefight/

 

[-live-]

It is because the US Government does not want us to win. They have created this mess and the rest of us have to pay for it one way or another. 911 was staged by the government and like so many other things they give us a big story to cover it up.

All they do is lie to us!!!! Look at all the stuff they do and they would put the rest of us in jail for most of it. We are heading to a ruling class and they are taking away more and more of our FREE RIGHTS and we are letting them do it.

i dont have much to say apart from thats a load of shit.

 

[slobone]

It's amazing that America doesn't have an impartial record of victories, considering its position in being the most powerful economical, militaristic, technological and industrial power in the world. Why does it keep losing wars? Even worse, some of its wars have resembled fights between an elephant and a mouse. Take the Vietnam War for example; against a third world country with ill-equipped peasants, victory should have been swift for the Americans. Except in this case the elephant ran away from the mouse, as they withrew in a humiliating defeat.

Also take the Korean War of the 1950s. Noone really lost the conflict but then again America didn't win it. Why did it end in an anti-climactic peace treaty? Again North Korea was (and still is) a pretty weak and feeble power that America should have easily conquered.

And today we have the conflicts in Iraq and the War on Terror, in which there seems be little sign of imminent victory. You can call the conquest of Iraq a success, but the same wouldn't be said in maintaining that conquest. The anarchy in Iraq shows no sign of dying down and, with or without the prescence of Allied occupation, it seems that Iraq is on the way to complete political disintegration.

Umm... last time I checked the UK was in this war too, along with all the other ones you mentioned. So if we lose, you lose. How do you like them apples?

 

[belamy]

Losers are more fun, especially when they engage themselves in catfights.