Ukraine Always Get What You Want

The United States lost the asymmetric portions of those conflicts - just like in Vietnam. Building Democracy through firepower is tough.

But in the traditional standup fight - like you're seeing in Ukraine - we dominated those portions of the conflicts. Granted in neither of those cases were we facing a near-peer opponent, like Russia is in Ukraine.

 

The Blackstone Valley Historical Park is in New England. It honors the pioneering textile mills of America. The Blackstone Valley is where one Samuel Slater helped set up the initial textile mills. Slater was a brilliant English immigrant who memorized how the machinery in England worked. He came to the USA and taught the Americans how to set up their mills. To quote Slater:

"I gave out the psalm and they have been singing to the tune ever since.”

Slater was much honored in my high school history class so I guess one country's hero is another's traitor.

 

Hertling, thread.

 

MSNBC’s Malcolm Nance is in Ukraine - serving in their version of the foreign legion.

 

Ever get the call from one of those parents claiming you cover Podunk so much because you have a kid on the team?

 

Justin answered it, but when the U.S. military has actually been allowed to fight with both hands it has no equal. We didn't lose the fight in Afghanistan, Iraq I or II, any of the various brush fire missions of the 80s and 90s (maybe Somalia, although that was more one battle than the entire conflict). Even Vietnam, we had the North Vietnamese on the ropes after Tet and lost the will to fight and not the fight itself.
Where we've fallen down is when we lose focus. We lose the peace. Maybe the mission wasn't well-defined, or our exit plan was not very good. That's more on the politicians than the military itself. When it comes to actually fighting wars, we're very, very good at it.

 

A couple of months ago the U.S. and Russia were thought to be near-peers. No longer.

 

Even the cat knows there's some serious shit going down.

 

Which gives us some idea how effective our trillion-dollar US intelligence apparatus is, and has been.

 

Why shouldn't it? We spend more on our defense budget than all the other countries combined.

And what good - exactly - has that fact done anyone but the defense contractors?

 

The United States has overwhelming been a force for good.

We’re in the midst of the most peaceful century mankind has ever known, and I'd like to think the US has had some role in that.

 

This. We don't lose the battle, we lose the peace.
There was never an exit strategy for Iraq and it turns out that simply pushing the Sunni power structure aside was not a good plan.
There was never any kind of strategy for Afghanistan, and once Bush quit pursuing bin Laden, we were lost. I once read something, may have been posted here, about how we could never 'win' Afghanistan because we never learned who the Afghani people were.