# Why can't the US win any wars anymore? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 7, 2021, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-the-us-win-any-wars-anymore/948205 "2021-08-07T17:40:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-the-us-win-any-wars-anymore/948205/184 "2021-09-03T14:14:40Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > The punitive expeditions of the 19th century frequently involved serious war crimes by modern standards, and it is obvious that is not acceptable in a modern sense. But they can be tailored to the times to avoid problems like that–targeting of military infrastructure and not cultural buildings or civilian buildings, focus on hurting an enemy’s military capacity, something they will have to spend time and money to replace etc. How does that work, when there’s no clear line between military and civilian? Didn’t see a lot of uniforms on the Taliban guys rifling through the left-behind guns. How do you prevent it turning into drone strikes on weddings, all over again? ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-the-us-win-any-wars-anymore/948205/185 "2021-09-03T16:04:53Z")
Well a hypothetical punitive expedition would not be going after the Taliban of the occupation, but rather the one that ran Afghanistan in the 90s or that is consolidating power there today. That form of the Afghanistan had meaningful military infrastructure because it was running the country. If you were hypothetically going into a country to attack a terrorist group “active” in that country, but not the host country’s government itself, you would instead be doing something like our intervention in Syria where we went in unilaterally (without the permission of the Syrian government), established something like a dozen or more bases, and started staging anti-terrorism activities against ISIS. I don’t really know that you would call that a punitive expedition, or what you would really call it, essentially a unilateral police action. ---
**Author:** ![Somethingwitty1](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/somethingwitty1/32/8899_2.png) [@Somethingwitty1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Somethingwitty1)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2021, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-the-us-win-any-wars-anymore/948205/186 "2021-09-05T02:27:50Z")
> **[Costs of the Afghanistan war, in lives and dollars](https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-business-afghanistan-43d8f53b35e80ec18c130cd683e1a38f)** > > At just short of 20 years, the now-ending U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan was America's longest war. Ordinary Americans tended to forget about it, and it received measurably less oversight from Congress than the Vietnam War did. This is what puzzles me. We killed way more of them then they did of us. US troop deaths vs Taliban/AL Qaeda deaths. Lots of other people died. Afghan army/civilians etc. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2021, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-the-us-win-any-wars-anymore/948205/188 "2021-09-06T16:30:31Z")
> [@On another topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/950897/352): > > We have a habit of bragging about the kill/death ratio while losing king of the hill games. Casualty counts or even battlefield wins are usually a piss-poor way to measure success in war. Just ask [Pyrrhus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhus_of_Epirus). Everybody remembers him for winning but taking too many casualties, but many fail to recall that those heavy casualties were relative to his situation. Every source agrees the Romans lost more men in absolute terms at every single battle while losing every single battle. It’s just that Rome’s citizen military system was very good at spitting out new armies and Pyrrhus’ was not. Winning on the battlefield is not everything and in low intensity warfare it may not be worth much at all. “War is the continuation of politics by other means” and for the Vietnamese their far heavier casualty rates 1946-1975 were worth it in the end. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2021, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-the-us-win-any-wars-anymore/948205/189 "2021-09-07T18:35:15Z")
Relative casualty counts just aren’t meaningful. There’s a much broader context to any war that will be much more definitive. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2021, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-the-us-win-any-wars-anymore/948205/190 "2021-09-07T18:38:21Z")
America’s enemies tend to be pretty…ant-like. No matter how many of them you mow down, they just keep dutifully trotting out. ---
**Author:** ![Folacin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/folacin/32/3195_2.png) [@Folacin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Folacin)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2021, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-the-us-win-any-wars-anymore/948205/191 "2021-09-07T18:48:44Z")
I think that is a problem for any occupying force. If you don’t actually win the hearts and minds, you’re going to be stepping on ants forever. Although I think the numbers of the Resistance in France are probably inflated by people claiming participation post-war, the Germans were constantly battling them. And given the number of times they were supported by the stalwarts of Stalag 13 (deep in the heart of Germany) their area of operations was huge. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2021, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-the-us-win-any-wars-anymore/948205/192 "2021-09-07T18:58:12Z")
Any war of occupation basically requires you pacify the occupied people. When that is attainable by relatively mild political mechanisms things don’t go too badly. In other situations, obviously it goes in a different direction. Pre-Modern powers with little to no conception of fundamental human rights had techniques against recalcitrant populations that would involve the functional mass murder of virtually all fighting age males, with any survivors being sold off into slavery, this would then functionally serve as a warning to nearby regions that might seek to resist the occupation. We’ve never really found a great answer to committed insurgency against an occupying power when the occupying power adheres to some standards of right and wrong–this even plagued the British in the American Revolution for example; while certainly by modern standards human rights violations occurred, the British were hamstrung in what they were willing to do because of the view that they were fighting against unruly English subjects not a “foreign people” who might be subject to a different level of suppression. ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2021, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-the-us-win-any-wars-anymore/948205/193 "2021-09-07T22:20:28Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > Pre-Modern powers with little to no conception of fundamental human rights had techniques against recalcitrant populations that would involve the functional mass murder of virtually all fighting age males, with any survivors being sold off into slavery, this would then functionally serve as a warning to nearby regions that might seek to resist the occupation. Yeah. The 19th century US is a good example of this, with the conquest of the western US and the victory against Mexico to conquer the southwest. In a sense we were the ants. No matter how many Americans the Indians or Mexicans killed, we just kept coming. The same could probably apply to the US Civil War as well. Lincoln was going to keep sending more Americans, no matter how many the Confederates killed. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-the-us-win-any-wars-anymore/948205.md?page=9)