Has America ever lost a war

Why would they be? The medals/ribbons for OEF/OEF and the Global War on Terror are technically separate so they don't have the same decorations anyways.

lets see...

1812. invade canada, get shit kicked in, have british/canadian troops march into DC, burn the white house down. spend a while slowly getting some semblance of parity with british/canadian forces, beat a few of the 4th rate ships the british had offshore. Sue for peace, and get away with securing a settlement with the same borders as before, while Britain barely give it any thought, and focus on the genuine threat of Napoleon.

1953, Korea. Stalemate - both sides ground to a stop facing each other. An armistice has been signed, but war has never officially ended. North Korea remains communist, so US objectives were not met.

1961, Cuba. Attempted invasion (Bay of Pigs) of Cuba to topple Castro. Total failure Textbook fuck-up. US rapidly washed its hands of the whole thing. Castro is still alive to this day.

1973, Vietnam. Withdrawal, throwing equipment off the sides of carriers to make way for incoming refugees. Communist takeover of Vietnam, objectives lost.

1984, Lebanon. Withdrawal after attacks on US soldiers, All objectives fail with civil war and syrian occupation continuing for further 6 years and 20 years respectively.

Iraq war. Victory at the time. but in hindsight, may well be considered a loss by destabilising the entire region, and causing far more damage..

Afghanistan: near as dammit a loss. Any gains made will be lost the instant troops go. Same as every other time. Not that that's anything new. The soviets, the british, the persians, all have had the same result in that godforsaken shithole.

>1961, Cuba. Attempted invasion (Bay of Pigs) of Cuba to topple Castro. Total failure Textbook fuck-up. US rapidly washed its hands of the whole thing. Castro is still alive to this day.
Please tell me that you are not seriously implying that the Bay of Pigs was a U.S. military operation.

It lost Vietnam. That's it really

Vietnam

People who actually try and say Iraq or Afghanistan are youre typical retard who spout the political equivalent of "DUDE YOU ONLY YOU 10% OF YOUR BRAIN!"

Also, if you ever see someone try to claim Desert Storm/Iraq War part 1 was in any way a failure for the US, they have literally no idea what they are talking about and should be ignored on all other views they have as well

Please tell me that you are seriously implying that the Bay of Pigs was _not_ a U.S-instigated operation?

Financed and funded by the CIA recruiting anti-Castro Cuban exiles, training them in US military installations, in florida, supply of arms and materiel, including eight CIA-supplied B-26 bombers which were armed in the US, flew to attack targets in Cuba, and then returned to the US afterward.

the entire thing is on record as being engineered by the US. The documents were declassified - you can go read them here:

cia.gov/library/readingroom/collection/bay-pigs-release

American instigated and funded and US military operations are two VERY different things.

>People who actually try and say Iraq or Afghanistan are youre typical retard who spout the political equivalent of "DUDE YOU ONLY YOU 10% OF YOUR BRAIN!"

See The US failed to achieve its goals in Gulf War II.

>won the war

Not until congress declares one, skip

>Iraq II and Afghanistan not a failure
>Iraq I a success
Care to elaborate?

Autism

I would actually like to hear you try and explain how the Gulf War in 91 was a failure in any way for America

Not that guy, but the stated goal for both conflicts was to establish a parliamentary democracy in said country.

Both the Karzai and the Al Maliki government are still in power.

>lost Vietnam
Nigga no. Stop spreading this meme.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Peace_Accords

What. Parliamentary democracy was never a stated goal in the Gulf War. It was to get Iraq to fuck off out of Kuwait. THIS AGGRESSION WILL NOT STAND, MAN.

>two completely separate things is autism
This isn't peas and carrots. It's lamb and fucking tuna fish.

so, an action funded by the US government, armed by the government, trained by the government, to attempt to overthrow a foreign nation's government is not an action by America?

Right.
And if I go down your street, find the local crack junkie, give him plans to your house give him a gun, a crowbar, and tell him to take your TV and stereo, and shoot you, so I can live in your house, It wasnt me that did it at all?

Bullshit. The US was instrumental in the Bay of Pigs, it was an action carried out for the political goals of America. whether it used american soldiers or not is irrelevant.

Question: Were US military personnel present for the Bay of Pigs invasion? No? Then it wasn't a US military operation.

I was talking about Gulf 2.

For the first one, yeah, it was more of

>REEEEEEEE IRAQIS GET OOOUUUUUTTT

Insofar as a battle between the USSR and the US then no
Insofar as a battle between capitalism and communism or even traditionalism vs progressivism then yeah

Told you, autism. user first post which you quoted talked about different kinds of conflicts where it could be argued that america lost. You quoted only one and started discussing semantics.

I'm not claiming that the Gulf war was a failure. It was certainly a massive success in a tactical sense and it demonstrated US dominance in the post-Soviet era. At a strategic level I don't see what it really achieved, despite having his forces BTFO Saddam continued to stir shit up for the next 12 years leading to Iraq II.

It's just that you clearly have a favourable view of the conflict so I'm genuinely curious as to your reasons why. Like most people on this board I was too young to really understand the conflict when it happened so I don't know much about it as a result.

>At a strategic level I don't see what it really achieved, despite having his forces BTFO Saddam continued to stir shit up for the next 12 years leading to Iraq II.

Stopping Saddam from essentially gaining control of more than half of the worlds oil supply and cucking his military so he couldnt do it again.

>It's just that you clearly have a favourable view of the conflict so I'm genuinely curious as to your reasons why

Well I think its the same the other way to, with people just hating america for whatever reason they have, so they like to just say America lost the Gulf War just to shit on them, without any real understanding of that conflict at all.

it was still an American-instigated military or paramilitary attack.

If you cant recognise that a force hired by a nation, funded by a nation, armed by a nation, transported by a nation, with air support from a nation, and everything else is an action aided and abbetted by that nation, then you are obviously utterly blind.

if the French DGSE hired a bunch of 1,300 Berbers from the Chad-Libya border areas today, armed them with French FAMAS rifles and French military equipment, trained them with the French Foreign Legion in Marseilles, Put them into French boats, Supplied them with a dozen ex-French Airforce Mirage jets that had been left in a Hangar for 15 years to perform bombing runs, and told them to go take out the US president - and then fucked up attacking Baltimore, instead of DC, and failed to kill the president before being gunned down,
Would you conclude that the attack was the work of a bunch of Chad goat-farmers, or is it the French?

Because that's what the Bay of pigs was. An american attack.

>hired
They were Cuban volunteers. The US didn't hire shit.

>stated goal
The stated goal of Iraq was to free the people from the yoke of Saddam and stop him from using his hypothetical WMDs, with the overarching intention of improving the lives of Iraqis and increasing overall security in the region. As of 2016 that has not been achieved, perhaps that will be the result by 2020 but if so, it's been a very costly road. At least the current Iraqi government is pro-US so that's something, but that could just be because they need the military backing.

Afghanistan is a strange case, from memory I though the initial justification was to get Bin Laden, then denying the country as a base for terrorist activities followed on from that. The whole reconstruction/democratisation of the country seems like an afterthought after the US realised their initially limited intervention had larger ramifications, now that they were involved they didn't just want to leave the country for the taliban to retake. Again as of 2016 it's pretty unclear what will become of the country, it really could go either way at this point.

> people just hating america for whatever reason they have
Yeah brah I'm not trying to do that, it's easy enough to find cases of failed US operations without having to resort to twisting success or inconclusive outcomes.

I guess the Gulf War worked well because it allowed the US military to do what they do best: annihilate poorly trained, poorly led, technologically inferior conventional forces.

I guess it's easy to see why there was so much overconfidence going in to Iraq in 2003. The difference of course was that the second time around the strategic goals were much more complex and long-term in nature, but the planning didn't reflect that.

I'm expecting both of them to turn into Lebanon style shitholes.

Which, as shitholes go, isn't bad.

Let's be real, it's mostly because Senior and senior's cabinet were a lot more competent than Junior and friends.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conch_Republic

The Conch Republic (República de la Concha) is a micronation declared as a tongue-in-cheek secession of the city of Key West, Florida, from the United States on April 23, 1982. It has been maintained as a tourism booster for the city since. Since then, the term "Conch Republic" has been expanded to refer to "all of the Florida Keys, or, that geographic apportionment of land that falls within the legally defined boundaries of Monroe County, Florida, northward to 'Skeeter's Last Chance Saloon' in Florida City, Dade County, Florida, with Key West as the nation's capital and all territories north of Key West being referred to as 'The Northern Territories'".[4]

While the protest that sparked the creation of the Conch Republic (and others since then) have been described by some as "tongue-in-cheek," they were motivated by frustrations over genuine concerns. The original protest event was motivated by a U.S. Border Patrol roadblock and checkpoint that greatly inconvenienced residents and tourists.

The Conch Republic celebrates Independence Day every April 23 as part of a week-long festival of activities involving numerous businesses in Key West. The organization — a "Sovereign State of Mind", seeking only to bring more "Humor, Warmth and Respect" to a world in sore need of all three according to its Secretary General, Peter Anderson — is a key tourism booster for the area.[citation needed]

Yes. The US lost 4 pilots trying to turn the tide of the battle.

Yeah that's entirely possible, I mean policy is not some kind of unified, totally rational process, not even in totalitarian states. In the US there are uncountable influences coming from all sides of government, media, military, international forces, economics etc. I guess that goes a long way to explain why Iraq II went bad - you had the populace out for blood after 9/11, a not particularly popular president, unclear intelligence picture, mixed foreign influences, military keen to get involved in a repeat of the 91 asskicking. All that together makes for some difficult decision-making.