None of which was happening anywhere close to US borders. In finance they say that past performance is no guarantee of future results, but you're eager to bet everything you have on this war outcome nonetheless.
Yes it did, you're arguing against basic facts.
Are we calling Iraq and Afghanistan losses? Sure would be great if we established a liberal democracy in Afghanistan, but it seems like after Osama was killed, Americans mentally declared victory and we were just burning money and lives.
Iraq had their leader overthrown and a new government established. Its really hard to call that a loss, even if it wasnt a perfect liberal democracy like we want.
Neither came out great but both are stable, Iraq is not destabilizing the region and Afghanistan isn't harboring people who want to attack the west and have the capability to.
That said, we never should have invaded Iraq and we probably could have accomplished what we accomplished in Afghanistan and more had we more seriously pursued diplomatic options in 2001.
Throw in some shock and awe on Taliban forces if we wanted to make more of a point, I suppose.
The mood in 2001 was one where diplomacy was impossible short of unconditionally handing over everyone in Al Qaeda to the US.
That wasn't an unreasonable request all things considered. We should have tried much harder to get the Taliban to accept that deal. They needed to look like more legitimate government with a stronger grip on power. We needed Al Qaeda. It should have been an easy deal to make. Marketing it would have been harder.
We've made the same deal a dozen times before. It's not like we didn't have the playbook ready to go. All we had to do was translate the end user guides from Spanish and replace "commies" with "Al Qaeda". Obviously the details would have needed to be hammered out but it's not like the precedent wasn't there.
Perhaps not for the country, but it could be for Putin. It's dangerous to make a man with the nuke codes desperate toward the end of his life.
The chain is even longer then the higher ups decision to actually launch a nuke though.
Would you press the button to nuke another country knowing that doing so will very likely kill your entire family and you?, or would you ignore the order?.
You always talk about the nukes because it's all you have left.
Western leaders will never bow to the nuclear threat because doing so means Russia/China can get their way in everything if they just use the nuclear threat.
I talk about nukes because I believe it's the biggest danger the world faces and have for a long time. I grew up in the shadow of the cold war being drilled on how to hide under my desk when the missiles came. Far before Ukraine I was mystified by everyone's ability to forget that threat still exists. It seems possible and even likely to me that nuclear catastrophe will come before and be far greater in magnitude than any AI or climate catastrophes, for me it overshadows every other threat. Apparently I'm not the only one that perceives a threat: https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/