this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2026
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Ok so you can't win a war if it wasn't clean and easy? And since when has the publicly stated justification for a war ever had anything to do with who won? Lots of wars start with false justifications.
Show me a reputable source that claims the US won the war. The 20 year war, of a superpower, VS a small middle eastern country.
20 years? The US ousted the ba'athist government in less than a month and installed a sympathetic regime in less than two years. Even a pyrrhic victory is still a victory. The US got what it wanted geopolitically and the government they waged war against was ousted.
It was costly, unjustified, evil, and probably not even worth it from the cold math of empire but it was still a military victory.