Orwell nailed it, no question. There is a telling theme with the US selection of places to hold our continuous wars. I. F. Stone said it so concisely: "You can't win a war in a peasant country fighting on the side of the landlords." The wars were chosen to be lost.
"You can't win a war in a peasant country fighting on the side of the landlords."
One can, if one is thoroughly ruthless.
In I.F. Stone-land, the 'wars of national liberation' merely replaced individual landlords with the landlord state, and serfdom with state-slavery. Described with euphemisms, an immiserated reality.
Thanks to your letter, the government realized that it was futile to try to recruit everyone. They decided to lessen the blowback with a lottery. Only lottery I ever won. Number 296.
I’m remembering that everyone I knew back then was against the war. My late husband was number 13 in the draft lottery, but they found a sun spot on one of his eyes so they didn’t take him.
My brother recently recommended a book called War is a Racket (1935) and I believe that John also mentioned it recently in one of his articles. I probably should get it, even though I’m already convinced that it’s true.
Thank goodness I was not taken because I had a duodenal ulcer. A couple of years after that it was found such ulcers could be cured with a dose of tetracycline. A high school classmate avoided conscription by telling the examiner he was a homosexual and a bed-wetter. Some boys expressed dismay he'd stooped so low, but among other classmates two who went to Vietnam died there. One more was maimed for life, became an alcoholic an a drug addict, and died in a homeless camp about twenty years later. All good boys gone for no good reason. There were probably other sad cases, but that's all I know of.
Yes I knew of many sad stories. I’m glad you weren’t taken due to the ulcer. I dated a guy named Rex prior to meeting my husband and they took him and made him a helicopter pilot. I was so concerned about his survival, but thank God he made it back. And, I knew of many guys who just played crazy and some who went to Canada to get out of having to go. It was a terrible time in our history. I pray that Trump will shed light on these endless wars and put a stop to the insanity.
You reminded me of the one classmate who went to Canada.
He's still there, I think.
Sometimes Trump says things that show he deplores the suffering, but then he authorizes more bombs and ammunition for Ukraine and Israel. The old, watch what he does, not what he says, may apply.
You were no coward you were brave. If every other boy had done the same no war would have happened. Standing up to the warmongers in your own land has always been the hardest thing to do, needing maximum bravery. I salute you.
There is NO CONGRUITY between Vietnam and WWII! The North Vietnamese did NOT ATTACK THE US! To equate the two is FOLLY! The leads up to both were antithetical, leaving the US leaders with completely different dilemmas.
They attacked our ally, South Vietnam. Part of WW2 started because we were at odds with Japan and they didn't like it, and as well we were supporting England against the Nazi attack as well as other European countries under Nazi attack. We defended those countries that deserved help, an identical situation where we defended South Vietnam, and of course the Viet Cong attacked us as well. When you're an American and in the service, called to duty, you go to war if needed. Otherwise you're a deserter and can be prosecuted.
When selective service starts with 11 year olds, I'll keep that in mind. Otherwise, you'd be hard pressed to find many parallels between those 2 wars. The durations and conclusions couldn't have been more different. I'll admit that the US was supporting our allies INITIALLY in Asia, but a decade later, allied arrangements were completely irrelevant to the decisions the politicians were making. Original causes had long since ceased to matter at that point. It was a freaking racket, which makes me sick when I see such similarities now in Ukraine. Of course, fighting for our country should be mandatory; we should expect our leadership to show both courage and decency in allocating human resources.
The Law of Moses - it is God's - allowed to stay away from the frontlines if you had recently found a woman and no child yet, planted a vineyard and never drunk from its fruit, or for fear. You might infect others with it and weaken their determination.
And, which is not said explicitly, it may be good for the fighting ones to have your back when needed.
Good you stayed alive. (I was born in that same year you wrote to Nixon.)
"It seems to me that anyone who has studied history could have known in 2022 that the U.S. government’s proxy war in Ukraine was doomed to fail"
What was concerning to me was that there was 2 ways to fail. One being a miscalculation that triggered a very destructive event or events. Once Russia had hung in there for several months, I don't think they would have ever backed down. Because our persistence would have further convinced them that the purpose of crossing the red-line in the first place was to eventually regime change Russia. At that point, had their Deep State been incapable of a coup to stop something horrific, it could have been really bad. Because I'm convinced our Deep State is as arrogant and maniacal as the Nazis were.
I hope to God I'm wrong. But look at how heartless they've been with the Covid insanity. And we're their own countrymen.
We lost 56k killed, our allies lost 250k killed, and the various communist groups 2MM, approximately. This is KIA, not all millions wounded. And for what. Just like Ukraine. Such a waste.
If the Obama Biden regime taught us anything, it is that war can be very profitable for a few well-positioned people. Enormously profitable. If I could make buck like the Bidens, heck, I would start a war with Canada tomorrow. In fact, that might be a darn good idea. I would start with sanctions: no more Canadians allowed in Palm Springs. Total ban. They would fold within a week.
Nah, we'll just cut off the electricity and the oil. Within a week energy prices will have you tearing down The Capitol with the cast of Duck Dynasty and a goon in a Chewbacca bikini.
I enlisted right after my Senior year of high school in 1965. The United States Marine Corps was my choice of course. We were the first Short Tracked Training Platoons in my Series.
I noticed certain anomalies in Boot Camp. I was a poor student but managed to have the highest SAT’s in my high school graduating class.
Back then they read every Boots aptitude or IQ scores in mass in our Quonset Huts. The Black inner city and Southern Boots scored very low. I was so discouraged by this disparity I extended a year, picked my duty station Vietnam and MOS Rifleman 0311.
This would change my life like thousands of others that saw action in Vietnam. My Battalion the 1/9 became known as the Walking Dead. There are over 800 Good Young Warriors from the 1/9 on the Wall.
I wrote Home to my Friends in 1966 we were taking 100 percent causalities. I was in error it was determined to be 93 percent. Unlike others my hunger for Truth began while I was in Hospitals for six months recovering from my wounds.
Vietnam was the first in a series of False Flag Wars. The Coup on 11/22/63 overthrew our Republic and killed JFK and the American Dream our Greatest Generation had Fought For So Valiantly.
So from Vietnam through the COVID19 Death Jab I have known each False Flag War and Event. We as a People Here and Abroad Have Been Blessed With This Last Opportunity In President Trump and His Cabinet.
The Fake News Media, Democrats, Neocons, Fed, Deep State and other Demonic Powers Will Destroy Us From Within. This is our last chance to save our Children and Their Children. It’s Time For Action and Faith In God Almighty.
How much of the US economy is related to war spending? Without a continuous supply of wars how do you keep this business going? The USA has not been involved in a war since 1945. Since then everything has been an adventure based on the template of the Korean war. The purpose is not victory at all, but to keep our machine going; keep all the benefits for the powerful; keep the poor poor at home; reinforce the hollywoodesque image of the macho American military; keep the dollar on high; keep everybody terrorized world wide. Just look at netflix, is there a single movie not filled with guns, fighting and shooting? Victory is the very last thing we want. How on earth would we pay for it? In fact what we have now in Ukraine represents an evolution of this template as we do not even need to send our boys over to do any actual dying. No doubt the pentagon boffins are sizing up lands in the world where a civil war can be similarly stoked up to give us everything we could want at their expense.
Nice little country you have there be a shame if anything happened to it.
If I were Putin I would have taken all Ukraine in the first two weeks. kicked out the European fascist wannabes, returned the legitimate elected government and establish the defensive line on Ukraine's western border. Why Putin did not do this surprises me. By allowing the thing to drag on he has created blood feuds that will last centuries and ensured the partition of Ukraine, just like Korea, which effectively moves the border eastwards. But what do I know. I am sure he and his ministers and generals must know the situation best. My thinking is that Trump is sick of this adventurism and tired of the way it degrades the reputation of the USA in the world. But compared to Putin Trump is just a flash in the pan, here today and gone tomorrow, so what difference can he make.
Since covid it has become crystal clear that none of our "democratically elected'' leaders have any real power. Our true rulers hide in secret. Envy the Russians and North Koreans who still know who their rulers are. Mark Carney is no more the leader of Canada than I am the leader of Jupiter. How I would love to know who he takes his orders from. Maybe some mysterious telephone or voice message as in Mission Impossible.
Great writing John keep your post coming and please increase the literary and historic references. We love them.
Carney moves in the world of elites…..the depth of which deceit and corruption is a daily mainstream of life. It defies the comprehension of most honest, hard working folks. Take the convicted child sex abuser Prince Andrew (who through private parties for Carney), convicted child sex predator Jeffrey Epstein and his recruiter, Ghislaine Maxwell (many photos of these folks together substantiate their relationship), Schwab of the WEF, top officials in Beijing’s CCP hierarchy ( a number of visits support this plus recent half billion $$ loan from the Bank of China). One could go on infinitum! Carney is canadas PM for the moment because the CCP interference in our recent election put him there. He is their tool to tear Canada totally apart so the CCP have a solid foot in the West!
I’m a Canadian whose heart breaks at what a Marxist inspired Liberal government has done under Trudeau since 2015, and now carney to finish the job!!
Love your analysis but hope you’re wrong about Trump being a flash in the pan. Let’s see…there’s JD, Don Jr., Lara, and of course Barron finally. Theoretically they each could serve 8 years! What moron is going to vote Democrat anytime soon after what they’ve done? God help us if Kamala gets elected.
"The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous." uhm, that's called recurring revenue. 'War' is an industry. I submit Putin's 'special military operation' is something else - not war as described as an industry.
Spot on. This empire building by the US has to stop. No wonder much of the world hates us and rightfully so. So many live have been wrecked by this policy. Thank you for making it personal and reminding us what the real story is.
John, you’re just an “isolationist”. What’s wrong with bombing foreign countries, overthrowing governments, and killing hundreds of thousands of people?
Your analogy about intervening with adult members of your own family fails. Presumably, most people who try that have the best interest of the other person at heart. That cannot be said about American foreign policy in Vietnam or many other places since.
It seems like most of the wars in the last 60 years have been about making the world safe for America to plunder the resources of the third world, despite the cover stories about establishing Democracy. In that sense, the communist propaganda was correct!
Of course there is no intention to win the war in Ukraine. As usual, it’s all about the Military Industrial Complex ( making $ for a select few). Also without any regard whatsoever to the deaths or injuries to many people. Wake up, folks! Seeing the bLue & yellow Ukraine flags all around he USA is so ridiculous.
When the South Vietnamese did not rise in a revolt during the Tet Offensive (1968), they revealed their dislike of the Socialist aggressors. The Tet Offensive destroyed the Viet Cong, instead.
The U.S. lost the war in Vietnam to the U.S. middle class, which had had enough, not to the North Vietnamese Army. One can observe that the U.S. lost the conflict because it did not fight to win. It fought to convince the North Vietnamese to withdraw. That effort almost succeeded, but it was a losing strategy from the start. It wasted years in continued conflict. The South Vietnamese military was hot to invade the North, but the U.S. nixed the idea.
To win that war, the North should have been obliterated. That means Hanoi and Haiphong. And just to be clear, Ho Chih Minh was no nationalist hero. He murdered every Vietnamese national leader he could get his hands on. In the South, the Viet Cong murdered village elders, teachers, historians, librarians, police chiefs -- everyone able to transmit and preserve Vietnamese higher culture. HCM imposed a collectivist system that had already murdered upwards of 60 million people by 1950. Preventing spread of his disease was a noble effort, badly pursued.
In iraq, the U.S. won the war, but lost the peace. The mistake made in Iraq was the same as made in Afghanistan. The U.S. tries to nation-build in lands where the people have no national culture. No social contact. No long-standing unifying theme. No cooperative confidence.
In Iraq, the U.S. properly removed Saddam Hussein, who was a monster, and his sons, also monstrous. The remaining power structure should have been left intact to run the country. With instructions that the U.S. would be closely watching -- no coddling of the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots. No more of the vile terrors, tortures, and rapes wrought by the Husseins.
In Afghanistan, the order of business should have been decapitation - Mullah Omar and his entourage -- and then leave. That's it. Leave the tribes to sort things out. The hunt for Osama bin Laden was entirely justified. But the attempted nation-building, where any cultural foundation or social contract was utterly absent, was again a recipe for disaster.
Attempted nation-building where tribalism is the all and every is a misdirected act of feel-good compassion. It always made things worse, as misdirected acts of feel-good compassion apparently ever do.
Orwell nailed it, no question. There is a telling theme with the US selection of places to hold our continuous wars. I. F. Stone said it so concisely: "You can't win a war in a peasant country fighting on the side of the landlords." The wars were chosen to be lost.
"You can't win a war in a peasant country fighting on the side of the landlords."
One can, if one is thoroughly ruthless.
In I.F. Stone-land, the 'wars of national liberation' merely replaced individual landlords with the landlord state, and serfdom with state-slavery. Described with euphemisms, an immiserated reality.
Agreed. What you described and what I described are, in my view, both true and comprise a single reality.
𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗽𝘂𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝗥𝗡𝗔 𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗶𝗱 𝘃𝗮𝘅 𝗶𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗱𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗻𝗼𝘄...... https://t.co/8gZO8Z0Oyz
Nice quote - thanks
De nada!
I wrote a letter to President Nixon in 1971, telling him I didn't want to die in Vietnam. I told him I might be a coward. I was 11.
Thanks to your letter, the government realized that it was futile to try to recruit everyone. They decided to lessen the blowback with a lottery. Only lottery I ever won. Number 296.
I’m remembering that everyone I knew back then was against the war. My late husband was number 13 in the draft lottery, but they found a sun spot on one of his eyes so they didn’t take him.
My brother recently recommended a book called War is a Racket (1935) and I believe that John also mentioned it recently in one of his articles. I probably should get it, even though I’m already convinced that it’s true.
Thank goodness I was not taken because I had a duodenal ulcer. A couple of years after that it was found such ulcers could be cured with a dose of tetracycline. A high school classmate avoided conscription by telling the examiner he was a homosexual and a bed-wetter. Some boys expressed dismay he'd stooped so low, but among other classmates two who went to Vietnam died there. One more was maimed for life, became an alcoholic an a drug addict, and died in a homeless camp about twenty years later. All good boys gone for no good reason. There were probably other sad cases, but that's all I know of.
Yes I knew of many sad stories. I’m glad you weren’t taken due to the ulcer. I dated a guy named Rex prior to meeting my husband and they took him and made him a helicopter pilot. I was so concerned about his survival, but thank God he made it back. And, I knew of many guys who just played crazy and some who went to Canada to get out of having to go. It was a terrible time in our history. I pray that Trump will shed light on these endless wars and put a stop to the insanity.
You reminded me of the one classmate who went to Canada.
He's still there, I think.
Sometimes Trump says things that show he deplores the suffering, but then he authorizes more bombs and ammunition for Ukraine and Israel. The old, watch what he does, not what he says, may apply.
It may be necessary to appear (and be!) strong to achieve and hold peace. Let's hope for him.
Totally agreed. But, remember that he’s having to weigh the lives of the many against the few, and that’s a very heavy weight.
Yay! You definitely WON that one, good job! 👍
You were no coward you were brave. If every other boy had done the same no war would have happened. Standing up to the warmongers in your own land has always been the hardest thing to do, needing maximum bravery. I salute you.
Thank you for your kind comment 🙏
Would you have said the same for WW2?
There is NO CONGRUITY between Vietnam and WWII! The North Vietnamese did NOT ATTACK THE US! To equate the two is FOLLY! The leads up to both were antithetical, leaving the US leaders with completely different dilemmas.
They attacked our ally, South Vietnam. Part of WW2 started because we were at odds with Japan and they didn't like it, and as well we were supporting England against the Nazi attack as well as other European countries under Nazi attack. We defended those countries that deserved help, an identical situation where we defended South Vietnam, and of course the Viet Cong attacked us as well. When you're an American and in the service, called to duty, you go to war if needed. Otherwise you're a deserter and can be prosecuted.
When selective service starts with 11 year olds, I'll keep that in mind. Otherwise, you'd be hard pressed to find many parallels between those 2 wars. The durations and conclusions couldn't have been more different. I'll admit that the US was supporting our allies INITIALLY in Asia, but a decade later, allied arrangements were completely irrelevant to the decisions the politicians were making. Original causes had long since ceased to matter at that point. It was a freaking racket, which makes me sick when I see such similarities now in Ukraine. Of course, fighting for our country should be mandatory; we should expect our leadership to show both courage and decency in allocating human resources.
True. But, we must evaluate him in comparison to the previous administration. And, hope and pray from there.
The Law of Moses - it is God's - allowed to stay away from the frontlines if you had recently found a woman and no child yet, planted a vineyard and never drunk from its fruit, or for fear. You might infect others with it and weaken their determination.
And, which is not said explicitly, it may be good for the fighting ones to have your back when needed.
Good you stayed alive. (I was born in that same year you wrote to Nixon.)
"It seems to me that anyone who has studied history could have known in 2022 that the U.S. government’s proxy war in Ukraine was doomed to fail"
What was concerning to me was that there was 2 ways to fail. One being a miscalculation that triggered a very destructive event or events. Once Russia had hung in there for several months, I don't think they would have ever backed down. Because our persistence would have further convinced them that the purpose of crossing the red-line in the first place was to eventually regime change Russia. At that point, had their Deep State been incapable of a coup to stop something horrific, it could have been really bad. Because I'm convinced our Deep State is as arrogant and maniacal as the Nazis were.
I hope to God I'm wrong. But look at how heartless they've been with the Covid insanity. And we're their own countrymen.
Precisely. Who in their right mind would trust the US government at the end of 2021/beginning of 2022?
We lost 56k killed, our allies lost 250k killed, and the various communist groups 2MM, approximately. This is KIA, not all millions wounded. And for what. Just like Ukraine. Such a waste.
Danny Huckabee
If the Obama Biden regime taught us anything, it is that war can be very profitable for a few well-positioned people. Enormously profitable. If I could make buck like the Bidens, heck, I would start a war with Canada tomorrow. In fact, that might be a darn good idea. I would start with sanctions: no more Canadians allowed in Palm Springs. Total ban. They would fold within a week.
Nah, we'll just cut off the electricity and the oil. Within a week energy prices will have you tearing down The Capitol with the cast of Duck Dynasty and a goon in a Chewbacca bikini.
I enlisted right after my Senior year of high school in 1965. The United States Marine Corps was my choice of course. We were the first Short Tracked Training Platoons in my Series.
I noticed certain anomalies in Boot Camp. I was a poor student but managed to have the highest SAT’s in my high school graduating class.
Back then they read every Boots aptitude or IQ scores in mass in our Quonset Huts. The Black inner city and Southern Boots scored very low. I was so discouraged by this disparity I extended a year, picked my duty station Vietnam and MOS Rifleman 0311.
This would change my life like thousands of others that saw action in Vietnam. My Battalion the 1/9 became known as the Walking Dead. There are over 800 Good Young Warriors from the 1/9 on the Wall.
I wrote Home to my Friends in 1966 we were taking 100 percent causalities. I was in error it was determined to be 93 percent. Unlike others my hunger for Truth began while I was in Hospitals for six months recovering from my wounds.
Vietnam was the first in a series of False Flag Wars. The Coup on 11/22/63 overthrew our Republic and killed JFK and the American Dream our Greatest Generation had Fought For So Valiantly.
So from Vietnam through the COVID19 Death Jab I have known each False Flag War and Event. We as a People Here and Abroad Have Been Blessed With This Last Opportunity In President Trump and His Cabinet.
The Fake News Media, Democrats, Neocons, Fed, Deep State and other Demonic Powers Will Destroy Us From Within. This is our last chance to save our Children and Their Children. It’s Time For Action and Faith In God Almighty.
Semper Fidelis
How much of the US economy is related to war spending? Without a continuous supply of wars how do you keep this business going? The USA has not been involved in a war since 1945. Since then everything has been an adventure based on the template of the Korean war. The purpose is not victory at all, but to keep our machine going; keep all the benefits for the powerful; keep the poor poor at home; reinforce the hollywoodesque image of the macho American military; keep the dollar on high; keep everybody terrorized world wide. Just look at netflix, is there a single movie not filled with guns, fighting and shooting? Victory is the very last thing we want. How on earth would we pay for it? In fact what we have now in Ukraine represents an evolution of this template as we do not even need to send our boys over to do any actual dying. No doubt the pentagon boffins are sizing up lands in the world where a civil war can be similarly stoked up to give us everything we could want at their expense.
Nice little country you have there be a shame if anything happened to it.
If I were Putin I would have taken all Ukraine in the first two weeks. kicked out the European fascist wannabes, returned the legitimate elected government and establish the defensive line on Ukraine's western border. Why Putin did not do this surprises me. By allowing the thing to drag on he has created blood feuds that will last centuries and ensured the partition of Ukraine, just like Korea, which effectively moves the border eastwards. But what do I know. I am sure he and his ministers and generals must know the situation best. My thinking is that Trump is sick of this adventurism and tired of the way it degrades the reputation of the USA in the world. But compared to Putin Trump is just a flash in the pan, here today and gone tomorrow, so what difference can he make.
Since covid it has become crystal clear that none of our "democratically elected'' leaders have any real power. Our true rulers hide in secret. Envy the Russians and North Koreans who still know who their rulers are. Mark Carney is no more the leader of Canada than I am the leader of Jupiter. How I would love to know who he takes his orders from. Maybe some mysterious telephone or voice message as in Mission Impossible.
Great writing John keep your post coming and please increase the literary and historic references. We love them.
Carney moves in the world of elites…..the depth of which deceit and corruption is a daily mainstream of life. It defies the comprehension of most honest, hard working folks. Take the convicted child sex abuser Prince Andrew (who through private parties for Carney), convicted child sex predator Jeffrey Epstein and his recruiter, Ghislaine Maxwell (many photos of these folks together substantiate their relationship), Schwab of the WEF, top officials in Beijing’s CCP hierarchy ( a number of visits support this plus recent half billion $$ loan from the Bank of China). One could go on infinitum! Carney is canadas PM for the moment because the CCP interference in our recent election put him there. He is their tool to tear Canada totally apart so the CCP have a solid foot in the West!
I’m a Canadian whose heart breaks at what a Marxist inspired Liberal government has done under Trudeau since 2015, and now carney to finish the job!!
Great comments, David O
Love your analysis but hope you’re wrong about Trump being a flash in the pan. Let’s see…there’s JD, Don Jr., Lara, and of course Barron finally. Theoretically they each could serve 8 years! What moron is going to vote Democrat anytime soon after what they’ve done? God help us if Kamala gets elected.
Another reason was Democrats cut funding for the South Vietnamese Army.
I remember reading an analysis by British military Chief of Staff who related that
the ARVN was holding their own quite well... up to that point.
"The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous." uhm, that's called recurring revenue. 'War' is an industry. I submit Putin's 'special military operation' is something else - not war as described as an industry.
Spot on. This empire building by the US has to stop. No wonder much of the world hates us and rightfully so. So many live have been wrecked by this policy. Thank you for making it personal and reminding us what the real story is.
John, you’re just an “isolationist”. What’s wrong with bombing foreign countries, overthrowing governments, and killing hundreds of thousands of people?
Exactly.
The wars are designed to lose. We need to blow up things to satisfy the MIC money pit.
Your analogy about intervening with adult members of your own family fails. Presumably, most people who try that have the best interest of the other person at heart. That cannot be said about American foreign policy in Vietnam or many other places since.
It seems like most of the wars in the last 60 years have been about making the world safe for America to plunder the resources of the third world, despite the cover stories about establishing Democracy. In that sense, the communist propaganda was correct!
Indeed, it's hard enough to intervene successfully even in close relationships with the best intentions.
𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗽𝘂𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝗥𝗡𝗔 𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗶𝗱 𝘃𝗮𝘅 𝗶𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗱𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗻𝗼𝘄...... https://t.co/8gZO8Z0Oyz
Of course there is no intention to win the war in Ukraine. As usual, it’s all about the Military Industrial Complex ( making $ for a select few). Also without any regard whatsoever to the deaths or injuries to many people. Wake up, folks! Seeing the bLue & yellow Ukraine flags all around he USA is so ridiculous.
When the South Vietnamese did not rise in a revolt during the Tet Offensive (1968), they revealed their dislike of the Socialist aggressors. The Tet Offensive destroyed the Viet Cong, instead.
The U.S. lost the war in Vietnam to the U.S. middle class, which had had enough, not to the North Vietnamese Army. One can observe that the U.S. lost the conflict because it did not fight to win. It fought to convince the North Vietnamese to withdraw. That effort almost succeeded, but it was a losing strategy from the start. It wasted years in continued conflict. The South Vietnamese military was hot to invade the North, but the U.S. nixed the idea.
To win that war, the North should have been obliterated. That means Hanoi and Haiphong. And just to be clear, Ho Chih Minh was no nationalist hero. He murdered every Vietnamese national leader he could get his hands on. In the South, the Viet Cong murdered village elders, teachers, historians, librarians, police chiefs -- everyone able to transmit and preserve Vietnamese higher culture. HCM imposed a collectivist system that had already murdered upwards of 60 million people by 1950. Preventing spread of his disease was a noble effort, badly pursued.
In iraq, the U.S. won the war, but lost the peace. The mistake made in Iraq was the same as made in Afghanistan. The U.S. tries to nation-build in lands where the people have no national culture. No social contact. No long-standing unifying theme. No cooperative confidence.
In Iraq, the U.S. properly removed Saddam Hussein, who was a monster, and his sons, also monstrous. The remaining power structure should have been left intact to run the country. With instructions that the U.S. would be closely watching -- no coddling of the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots. No more of the vile terrors, tortures, and rapes wrought by the Husseins.
In Afghanistan, the order of business should have been decapitation - Mullah Omar and his entourage -- and then leave. That's it. Leave the tribes to sort things out. The hunt for Osama bin Laden was entirely justified. But the attempted nation-building, where any cultural foundation or social contract was utterly absent, was again a recipe for disaster.
Attempted nation-building where tribalism is the all and every is a misdirected act of feel-good compassion. It always made things worse, as misdirected acts of feel-good compassion apparently ever do.