this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2026
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Chapotraphouse
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I've had multiple arguments on hexbear where a whole bunch of AmeriKKKans got really offended because i pointed out that the US hasn't won a war since the end of WW2, angrily informing me that Iraq and Afghanistan totally count as wins because fucking shit up and causing chaos in the region is already sufficient for US interests, completely ignoring that the US was unable to ever gain full control over either country and originally went in with the intention of turning both of them into reliable client states like Germany or Japan, which they had openly stated before the invasions. It was as if i was suddenly back on reddit, where such things also happened every time i dared to trash talk the track record of the empire's troops. Even being an anti-imperialist doesn't stop AmeriKKKans from believing in the supposed might of their shit-ass third tier useless overpriced military, they just can't help being good little patriotic chauvinists inside.
sorry to tell you but Iraq was in many ways a victory because the US continues to control all Iraqi oil revenue and they did destroy a functional anti-imperialist state and force it into underdevelopment
Yep, the "inept and stumbling empire" is a dangerous trope. American ruling-class won a lot in those wars.
The troops are absolute losers tho stacking Ls.
Sadaam was in many ways, already a US puppet.
But he tried to switch the dollar for the Euro. This was unacceptable to the US, and the spineless servile Europeans helped the US stomp Iraq into the ground.
He was a puppet that tried to navigate the dynamics between himself and his masters.
And ofc somebody barges in to prove my point by telling me that it was "in many ways a victory", a pentagon spokesperson couldn't have come up with a better wording for "losing is actually winning." That the sheer economic and military reach of the empire makes even its defeats bearable, that just fucking shit up without achieving much is enough to further its ends somehow, doesn't change that it has not been able to actually conquer an enemy since 1945.
If Iraq won the war, it's hard to imagine how much worse defeat could be than what they got. Did they give the New York Federal Reserve Bank total control of oil reserves as a consolation prize? What would the conditions of US victory have been that weren't met?
on hexbear or lemmy? because that is very different from the conversations I've seen here
On hexbear, lemmy at large would've also told me that the US won Vietnam.
seems like a semantic mismatch over what constitutes victory and for whom exactly
All this confusion is because of thinking in terms of nations instead of class. Of course the US lost all those wars, but the international capitalist class won (at least short term) It's the difference between thinking like a lib like Chomsky (inept empire theory) vs thinking like a marxist like Parenti.
Yeah, i get that, but if i wanted to say "the capitalist class has derived a net benefit from these wars", which is obviously true, i would have said that. I would not use a wording explicityl referring to the military of a nation state, which is what is being discussed here. Understanding the purpose of war within a dialectic materialist framework and recognizing that this frequently supersedes what Clausewitz or Sun Tzu or whatever ancient strategist dork yoou want to drag out would consider a win condition does not mean that we can't look at geopolitics on the level of nation states' armies and conventional military objectives as well as long as we are aware of the wider class politics framework they are situated within, in fact if we want to fully grasp geopolitics we have to be able to alternate between both perspectives and understand when which one is the aplicable one. And given that we are talking the performance of the US armed forces here, it's kind of obvious that when i say "US military", i mean just that and not "the interests of international capital".
Yes, well said, thank you.
Yes, and it's also kind of obvious, that I agree with everything you said. I liked your comment and wasn't trying to argue. Though, I wanted to add an important point: in my experience, people do confuse those things constantly in almost every second comment on the hexbear news thread.
Sure we do. It's just that we already constantly over emphasize the "nation state perspective" because that's what liberal news do and it takes effort to do an analysis and situate an event in the class struggle. Just posting an article and unquestioningly adopting it's ready made perspective takes less effort. Thats why the class perspective is often way under represented, even among marxists eg when talking about the US war on Iran.
Centering class means people in the US need to take responsibility and do their part to make capital feel the pain. Capital needs to be prevented from shifting the consequences of the lost war on the workers or they won't think twice about starting the next doomed war. It's an active perspective aimed at organizing.
On the other hand, the "nation state perspective", while absolutely necessary, without class analysis tends to devolve into something very much like sports commentary. Arguing about which side is winning without any intention of taking part in the struggle. This is objectifying to the fighters of the resistance. Cheering on the resistance overseas is not enough. We have to become part of it.
Fair points, i really have nothing to add here.
I think it is valuable to recontextualize the parties. US victory does not require an outright military victory at all, just achieving strategic goals for itself as the primary seat of global capital. As global hegemon under neoliberalism, positioning in this way is less about conquering and annexing or explicitly colonizing a country and is more about ensuring the order itself remains in place and opening up new profit sources. If a state steps outside that order, a win is forcing them back into it, ideally in a way that does a new round of primitive accumulation, turning nationalized industries into imperialist profit centers.
I think we can say that Iraq and Afghanistan are not outright victories for this neoliberal order, though. But I think most other "interventions" have been.