Also, calling Iraq a win is really stretching things.

Most people seem to have decided that one is on Biden for some reason, including Biden.

He expected to lose the first election. He wanted to be able to use it as proof that the system was against him, to fire up the Fox News rubes and jumpstart his new TV network. He basically wanted to lose, and instead he won.

It's amazing. He's such a failure he failed at failing.

The BIGGEST Loser!!!

That's an insult to Bushes and shrubbery.

Nah, even the bushes were better at this than him

The last time the US won was WW2.

The wars were won in both cases. Decisively.

Hearts and minds were not won, in either case. There is a good question whether the nationbuilding could even theoretically have succeeded, given how tribal and divided the countries were. IMO it was stupid to try in the first place, especially in Afghanistan.

In America, we punish the incumbents. BoTh PaRtIeS have told their own constituents to fuck off; membership of registered voters is at 30% each. Independents are now 40% of voters.

Whoever wins the election tells the people who elected them to fuck off; so, we vote them out. That's it. The new election winner then tells the people who elected them to fuck off, and so on.

Examples: Biden runs with minimum wage increase as platform, wins, then tells everybody to fuck off.

Trump then runs with "no war" as platform; wins, goes to war and tells his voters to fuck off.

He will be replaced by a Democrat, who will then also tell their voters to fuck off.

Repeat ad nauseam. Neither party does what they are elected to do and are then punished, to be replaced by the other party that will refuse to do what they were elected to do.

We can't vote ourselves out of this, unfortunately.

They don't care. It's a video game to most Americans. That's what having oceans between you and the bombs does.

I'm sadly forced to work alongside some republican asshats, and let me tell you, they're fucking ecstatic about how the usa military is kicking Iran's ass. Reality has no bearing on them.

The US committed a war crime on day one, and Israel has been on a war crime spree since Oct 7.... if this turns into a world war, it'll be that Mitchell and Webb skit.... "are we the baddies?"

You're being too lenient. It's not just Republicans, they're only 1/3 of the population, the even bigger issue is the "moderate" and "apolitical" people that make up another 1/3...these people will loudly oppose anything and everything but blatant extreme right wing authoritarianism, in fact they'll get more upset about the final 1/3 of the population that's against authoritarianism than they will ever get at literal dictators.

...I'm not sure Europe would be better off if Iran was controlled by Russia, and I'm not sure if an independent Iran is a realistic option. At the end of the day, it seems like Europe needs the oil more than America does.

I sort of agree though. I haven't heard a compelling argument as to why we are interfering in Europe's problems. They have the strength of character to take on countries like Iran and Russia.

The way I interpret this is single-handedly lost the war. Afghanistan was over 4 presidents (Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden). The sloppy withdrawal by Biden was die to no planning and a treaty signed by Trump to do so by 2/29/2020.

The war was won, the person you handed the reigns to just ran away so fast when the enemy came it appeared like it was you being run out of the country.

Also Trump losing Afghanistan

Nixon continuing horrible foreign policy doesn't absolve him. Also he conspired with Hanoi to sabotage LBJ which is straight up treason and extended the war another five years

admittedly one of the reasons he did that was because he thought it would give him political cover to shut McCarthyism down

I want to learn more about that. Got a recommendation?

Eisenhower deserves the blame for Vietnam

Eisenhower sent a small number of "advisors." JFK sent more. The big escalation happened under Johnson, who was furious at how the Pentagon outmaneuvered him.

I would amend that to "since WWII", and the answer would still be no.

The "global war on terror" ended with a rather dramatic raid that killed bin laden. And the war part of Gulf war 2 was an obvious victory.

But winning a peace is a fuckton harder. And we haven't done that since Vietnam.

Like on their own? If so, then not even Gulf War 1 counts, b/c they were part of the UN coalition. I think maybe the invasion of Panama?

Nixon was not decent. The difference was that a Senator (Goldwater) told Nixon point blank that he was getting impeached and the senate had the votes to convict and remove.

Like most government officials "retirement" is getting fired.

I genuinely think he's by far the most likely president in this country's history to launch ICBMs if he knows he is fucked. Which was a conclusion myself and any non-moron also came to in 2015.

He is really old now. A good cold, covid, a peanut or even a strong fart could do him in.