Hacker News Reader

Comment by jfengel | Hacker News Reader

America won Iraq and Afghanistan in a walk.

They didn't do a great job of nation building afterwards, but the actual war part was very successful.

You go to war because you want an strategic outcome you can't get with other means. I doubt the strategic outcome of the USA in Irak or Afghanistan was "kill a lot, lose not that many, leave the country in shambles, achieve nothing in return".

The strategic outcome in both wars was to replace the goverment for a friendlier one, and in both cases the USA didn't get it, not even close.

But if you view wars as an sport where people kills other people and the winner is the one who kills better/more, then war is declared over and "teams" look for another war to "play", indeed USA won both wars in a walk.

"The strategic outcome in both wars was to replace the goverment for a friendlier one, and in both cases the USA didn't get it, not even close."

The current Iraqi government is considerably more friendly to the US.

Yes it showed in the ongoing US Iran conflict. /S

We achieved "get the Iraqis out of Kuwait" back in the day.

There were 2 wars in Iraq: the first one main objective was "get Saddam out of Kuwait", which was a success. The second one, much diffuse in its targets (remove WMD that didn't exits in the first place, remove Saddam from power and leave behind a quasi-anarchy, replace Saddam with a puppet government...?). In any case, Saddam was removed in 2003, but the war protracted well into 2011 against insurgents. The US left he country declaring "war won", but war continued until 2017 against the Islamic State. Is not like the US left behind a democratic friendly country in 2011, like South Korea, South Vietnam or Japan decades before. Since 2017 and still ongoing today there is a war between Iraqi army and the Islamic State, albeit much less intense than 2012-2017.

Gulf War, it was a walk in the park. Second Iraq War, not so much, and you can't barely say US won anything.

Not alone

Bit lost here, to be honest - What exactly did the US win in these engagements?

You might make a case for increased control of and importance in the middle east for Iraq, sure - that declined somewhat after a forced fumbling backwards out of Afghanistan and tanked on contact with Iran, so if that was the take home stuffed panda prize to write home about it's been well and truly run over by a road train and left in a ditch.

Clearly big wins for the USofA PMCs, but that's a little more narrow than "America".

What the fuck are you talking about? Afghanistan was handed back over to the Taliban. That's a victory? Kill them and chase them for decades and then release a bunch of their prisoners and return control of the country to them and declare victory?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com