American here. Amazing the Seminole wars wasn't featured here. The Seminoles were the only Indigenous tribe not completely removed from their ancestral lands. The Red Cloud war was a picnic compared to the Seminole wars.
Just because around 200 of them manage to hide away in the swamps of Florida doesn't change the fact that almost all were deported out of Florida. So no, it was no victory.
There’s two movies about the Seminole wars….”Distant Drums” 1951 with Gary Cooper and “Seminole Uprising” 1955 with George Montgomery….both showed little of the culture or the way of life of the people and was typical Hollywood Indians v cavalry fare…
The real roots of Vietnam stretch way further back - to the year 1919, when a young Ho Chi Min visited Paris and implored both President Wilson as well as British leadership to recognize and support Vietnamese independence from Colonial French administration. Had they listened to him, they could have kept Ho, and by extension Vietnam, solidly in the Western orbit. We never understood that the Vietnamese saw the war as a struggle for their independence, rather than an ideological proxy battle between the East and West.
They also signed the 1973 Paris Peace Accords to end the external war with the US. As far as they were concerned the war was a Civil War and they knew for a fact that the South Vietnamese government were hiding behind the military power of the US Military. And that fighting the US Military wasn't an option. As even their officers admit they never won a single battle against US Military forces. Thus it was a strategic move to get the US out of the way. Everyone knew the South Vietnamese Military wasn't up to snuff and would lose. But the Politicians made it into an ideological war which was the failure then blamed the military instead of attacking responsibility.
Well the French were never going to do that and the only one that would somewhat support it was the U.S but we entered late to the war so we could not do much.
The War of 1812 is big in Canada. I visited Fort York in Toronto and the guides talked a lot about it. I’m from Texas and truthfully knew more about the Battle of San Jacinto which liberated Texas from Mexico than I knew about the War of 1812. Some exhibits in Toronto mentioned that the Indigenous peoples had a representative at the Peace treaty and were hoping for some concessions too between Canada, Britain and the Indigenous tribes of Canada. Of course that didn’t work out. You might want to discuss the Indigenous view of the War of 1812 and how they were treated at the negotiating table. Actually you could do a larger discussion about how the indigenous often helped the British, Americans or Canadians during the different conflicts through the years and then were basically screwed.
Yes thank you for asking. I want to see history told from the Native perspective. me too man. I am Ojibwe and Woodland Cree. My family has fought in every major war since the Invasion of Canada and the Burning of York in the War of 1812 just to be screwed over by the Crown.
The war of 1812 was an impossible victory for Canada if it wasn't for the indigenous fighters and their relationship with General Brock before he was killed in battle. The indigenous people knew the land, how and when to attack. The indigenous people have been continuously screwed by Canada
About the War of 1812: not only did the British invade Washington DC, but they also burned the original White House to the ground (1600 Pennsylvania Blvd is not the original address) and while doing so they took George Washington's desk as a trophy. It was not returned until the Clinton presidency, mostly because prior presidents did not believe the desk was real. Washington's desk was left in Canada for almost 185 years, thus it was Canada who tried returning the desk multiple times during the Twentieth Century.
The burning of DC was quite pointless and had no impact on the war really. The whole goal of the Chesapeake Campaign was to drive US forces out of the NW Territory, and divert them south. Instead, US planners diverted most of their resources to Baltimore where the British actually meant to attack. This is why President Madison had to hastily assemble a militia to defend Bladensburg, the real Army was at Baltimore. The burning of the white house specifically brought heavy censure on British Parliament members, with opposition PMs actually making fun of them for thinking they had actually achieved something notable. By 1815, the US controlled most of Upper Canada, had defeated Britain's Native American allies, had destroyed the Anglo-Spanish alliance in Florida, and had defeated all of Britian's invasion attempts.
The Iraq war was, within the "western world" also a very debated topic. A large amount of western countries opposed it, including France that notably threatened to use its veto power
@@IAMJEFFREY-cw9ns Yes, and in one of the ridiculous callbacks to the First World War, whereby the United States changed the hamburger to Salisbury steak, the United States government declared that French fries would be called "Freedom Fries," a euphemism that would prove to have no real power to it, just like the entire conflict. And of course, the French were proven right in seeing the war as nothing more than a personal vendetta for former president George W. Bush as well as a political powerplay that would monstrously backfire.
Or that Trump never lost an election. Which begs a question, if he runs again without admitting defeat won't that set him up as a 3-termer ? Unconstitutional !
Big difference between losing and walking away... Unfortunately we have the attention span of gnats and no pressure on our borders to incentivise the civilians to stick with anything longer than a few years.
0:35 - Chapter 1 - Red cloud's war 4:05 - Chapter 2 - The war of 1812 7:05 - Chapter 3 - The vietnam war 10:25 - Chapter 4 - The afghanistan war 13:05 - Chapter 5 - The Iraq war
One basic fact about guerilla warfare that the US never seems to grasp is that those waging are aware that it is usually not possible to win outright militarily, so the strategy is centered on not losing, and continuing to not lose until some external factor such as a political shift or intervention from another power. And this has proven effective time and time again.
I knew this video was gonna have so many issues on it. War of 1812: Wrong, the US was not trying to annex British North America. This is stated in the President's declaration of War against Britain as well as proven in evidence in 2 prior votes in the lead up to the war by the US Senate and House of Representatives on what the US would do if they ever gained position of British North America. In both cases the people who wanted to annex British North America didn't even have the votes to get their argument onto the floor to argue that the US should annex the land if it ever gained control of it. So, yes, there were people in the US who wanted control of what would become Canada. But the overwhelming majority of US lawmakers and citizens did not want the people living in British North America to become citizens of the US. And this is because of the large Catholic population in British North America. The US, at that time still had very few Catholics living within the country and they had the same opinion of Catholics that the majority of British people did. Which to keep it YT safe, was they VERY much did not like them (and I am a Catholic). The US hate/dislike of Catholics would start to dissipate in the 1840's forward as Irish Catholics started to immigrate to the US in large numbers. The US's primary goal in the war of 1812 was to get the UK to stop supporting the Native American's in their effort to create a new Indian nation in US territory around Michigan. The second US goal was to stop British impressment of US sailors. Which while the British didn't agree to that in the peace deal they did never enact such actions again. So the US completed their goals in the war of 1812, the US got things out of the war, the British didn't. The reason the US invaded British North American territory was to capture it and use it as a bargaining chip with the British to end the war and get what the US wanted in the war quickly. Vietnam War: A much better argument than the War of 1812. But still for the Vietnam war it is easy to argue the US WON the war. There is a 2 and half year gap between when the US made peace till when N Vietnam attacked again. During those 2 and half years the US had gained everything they wanted in the peace deal that ended the "American War" as it is called in Vietnam. The US kept South Vietnam as a capitalist democracy and stopped the spread of communism in South East Asia. That is what the US wanted and why the US entered into the fighting in Vietnam. When the war started up again 2 and half years after peace was made that was a separate war that the US was not a party to. Should the US of intervened in the war and helped South Vietnam per the terms of the Paris Peace Accord? Yes. But not getting involved in a war your ally losses doesn't mean the US lost that war. People try to set Vietnam up as one giant war from 1945 until 1978 when in reality it is many different wars. Some that the communist Vietnamese won and some that they lost. In the end the communist's did win and complete all of their goals. It took all of those wars to gain their independence as a united nation and then their wars with China to remain an independent nation. I'd argue (and history is on my side now with this) that they would have been much better off to have wanted to unite more under the Democratic/capitalist South Vietnam. What Simon said within the video on what happened to South Vietnam after the US left was correct though. Ford did want the US to defend our ally and the Democrats refused his want to send military supplies to South Vietnam. But that doesn't mean the US lost the physical war. That war ended with a technical US "victory". Of course the end result of what happened later made the war a loss for the US. And what the US put into the war didn't at all justify what the US got out of the war. Even if the US was able to secure a democratic/Capitalist Vietnam for half or even ALL of Vietnam, the cost the US had to spend on their freedom was not worth it for the people of the US. But that is something the US does. But that is just something the US does. The US wants to spread freedom(democracy) around the world and when the US sees people fighting for that they want to try to help those people. It is a noble and undercredited aspect of the United States. If the US wanted to the US could isolate itself from the rest of the world and the US could be fine forever. But since WW2 the US has decided it is going to try to help the world and spread freedom to people around the world. Should the US stop that and let Ukraine for example die? Just let Russia take what they want and force them to live under the government Russia picks for them because they are stronger? Should the US let China take Taiwan and take the freedom the people of Taiwan have away? Should the US let the Taliban take all rights away from the women of their nation? Afghanistan War: The war completed it's primary goal which was to destroy Al Qaeda. The US didn't care that the Taliban was in control of Afghanistan until they refused to hand over Al Qaeda (better to say, the US didn't care that the Taliban was in control to the point they wanted to get involved in that nation). That lead to the US trying to make Afghanistan a democracy after the military invasion was completed. The military goals were completed. As stated above under the Vietnam war argument, the US wanted to make Afghanistan a democracy so that all the people (particularly the women) had if not equal rights, at least some rights. It was a good and noble thing for the US AND the other NATO nations to have fought for. But at some point you have to look at things at the cost it is putting on the US. If the US spends all it's resources fighting for the rights of one nation that limits what the US can do in the future. It had to at some point come down to what the people of Afghanistan wanted. Not enough of them were willing to fight for the rights of their women. There is a large amount of their population that don't care about equal rights (especially for their women). So let them live how they want. It should sicken everyone the way they treat women within that country still to this day. But that can't be the focus of the US to the point that it weakens the US in potential wars against near pier adversaries. So long as the Taliban don't make Afghanistan a sanctuary for terrorists again the US, NATO and other Western thinking nations should just let those people live under the rule of medieval barbarians who treat women as property. They have to care about how they are living more then the West does. Iraq War: So easy to counter. Iraq is still a democracy under the government the US setup for them after the US military and allies easily toppled Saddam's evil government. The goal of that war, to remove Saddam from power, was completed and done easily so. The reason's why the war started and if it was the correct decision to make to invade is another argument entirely. But it is 100% FALSE that the US didn't find WMD's in Iraq. This is the most non-covered story in modern world history. The US government under Obama admitted that the US government had found THOUSANDS of chemical weapons that Saddam was hiding and many US soldiers and Iraqi workers were even injured from them while moving them and destroying them. The reason the US didn't admit this right from the start was because the design of those chemical weapons was American made, the designs given to Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war by the CIA. This isn't some secret story hidden on the CIA website either. This is a story that was covered by every major newspaper and website in the world in 2014. From the NY Times, Wash Post, Fox News, Yahoo, Al Jazeera, you name it and they covered it. Just Google "chemical weapons were found in iraq" and pick the article you want to read about it. We went for years saying nothing was found in Iraq that everyone still believes that despite it being so easily countered. Lastly, ISIS being formed in Iraq after the US left doesn't make the Iraq war a loss or a failure. The US was just invited back to Iraq after Obama pulled the troops out and the US and other allies went and helped the new Iraqi democratic government fight ISIS and sustain themselves so that some nutty terrorist nation was not created in the gap territory between Syria and Iraq.
They also rely on the protection of various western agreements and conventions which ties the hands of developed countries military, while obeying none of the laws themselves
Some have said, "We didn't lose the war, we lost the peace." I'm a bit surprised that they didn't cover the US in Africa and Italy during WW 2, where we had some real losses. One historian spoke of the War of 1812, "The US didn't win, the British didn't win, the Canadians won. They became more of country due to that war." I have always wondered why the British didn't go ahead and bring more to bear on the US. I assumed that after 20 years of fighting Napoleon they were tired of war.
20 years of fighting Napoleon, and 40 years before that, a decade of fighting the French in both Europe and North America. Where, when they asked the incredibly corrupt colonies to merely pay for *part* of the defence of said colonies, were conned into revolting by the upper crust of the colonies, including a few of the founding fathers.
Cause we are still a colony, that’s why. They left but didn’t leave. Just like they left India, but still there. They learned the trick of economic control to rule the world.
The bankers won the war of 1812. The entire point of the war was to get the US back under the control of the bankers. The 2nd bank of the US was created after the war and lasted 20 years until Andrew Jackson killed it. Then Lincoln tried to create a new national currency and then he died. Kennedy also tried to do the same based on silver. Then he died just like Lincoln. Coincidence, not likely.
We were more important as a trading partner. Relations were basically normalized right after the Revolution, and trade was so lucrative that the New England states almost seceeded in protest over 1812 because it was so economically disruptive.
@@LordSluggo Well, the American military was almost non-existent and as the video stated the country wasn't too supportive or united on the war. With France no longer able to help the US, like they did during the Revolution, it just seems to me like the Brits could have taken the country again and called all the shots.
“History Doesn't Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes” - Mark Twain. Here the rhyme is engaging in conflicts without understanding local geopolitics/cultures.
I thought this would be a specific battles video. Should you do one, then consider First Savo Island (IJN surface force obliterates an Allied surface force at Guadalcanal), Kasserine Pass (Germans give USA a trial by fire), Chancellorsville (CSA humiliates much larger USA force), and Camden (Horatio Gates tries to be a hero).
The U.S. has a history of losing or getting a serious bloody nose in every first battle of a war. Bull Run, Ia Drang, Lexington and Concord, Kasserine, Pusan Peninsula...etc
Bingo! The geopolitical goals for every military conflict were not the primary goal. They were simply the pretext for feeding psychopaths within the military industrial complex. A military victory would have simply been the cherry on top.
Everybody's heard about Midway, but most people have never heard off the Battle of Savo Island a couple of month later. An American and allied disaster, four cruisers sunk and the Japanese got away with only light damage.
Midway was pivotal. The Japanese lost the Kido Butai. It ended there ability to effectively attack Hawaii or to credibly threaten anything further East. The Japanese lost carriers and irreplacable highly trained carrier pilots. You are comparing that to the US losing 4 cruisers? How long would it take the US to replace 4 crusiers and their crews in 1942? 3 months?
That was a battle and part of the greater pacific front. America lost battles, but not conventional wars. We lost Afghanistan because there was not clear objective and the same with vietnam
Canadians (then British subjects) wanted revenge after the burning of York, now called Toronto. Which wasn't of any real strategic advantage compared to Kingston. Just over a year later DC was burned. Very cool history along the St. Lawrence with the old forts and turrets. Unfortunately the site of the battle of Crysler Farm is underwater due to the flooding of the St. Lawrence Seaway (WHICH NEEDS A MEGAPROJECTS VIDEO PLEASE!) There is a monument near Morrisburg Ontario of this battle.
I'm Canadian Canada did not burn the Whitehouse it was British opperation there may have been a few Canadianz serving but most of the Troops were Peninsular War Veterans
@@Mike-hu3pp To all the Canadians out there. Can we all agree that we sometimes a havva little bittov an insecurity problem and can getta little touchy sometimes about our history ( so do they ) . We know what we've done and don't need attaboys from anyone !
The big question about Afghanistan is: How long will it take the Taliban to defeat Afghanistan? The "unconquerable nation" (historically proving very difficult for conquerors from Alexander the Great to the Soviet Union) seems to be on the verge of self-conquest... and the question becomes: what will happen then? Seems like a good Warographics episode... and maybe it's already been done. Simon makes so many videos I've lost track of them all.
Allow me to say, as an American, my nation has perfected the art of showing up at other countries' doorsteps and raining utter destruction upon them with unmatched rapidity, precision, and effectiveness. We are shockingly good at breaking things in very short order. That is not, however, the same as always achieving our objectives. In Afghanistan, for instance, the USA collapsed a sitting government into a struggling insurgency in about a month. It could not, however, break that insurgency in 20 years, and the government that we left in its wake collapsed in a number of hours of our departure. But give the US military the opportunity to break stuff? Greatest Of All Time.
Rebuilding a destroyed country is not one of the military's purposes. I don't it's in the job description of any military. That's the diplomats job to figure it out. At most the military stabilizes the chaos it helped create.
@@fertilerevitilizer7833 I didn't say that we didn't kill a lot of Taliban. That's part of "break stuff," which I mentioned that we're really good at. No, the problem is that the Taliban took the country back over about a day after we left.
81 US soldiers taking 60 natives with them when they were ambushed by 1000 elite warriors is not a mere “token defense”. That’s a damn good fight when you’ve been totally surprised by a force more than 10x your number.
Some on the ones on the Bozeman Trail looked very much like the Hollywood style log forts. The fort that Fetterman was stationed at did have the log walls. It was so dangerous that the commander had a standing order, "No one went outside the walls without permission and a gun."
OMG 😂😂😂 google is throwing shade at you. WHHHHY did it add the "translate to English" button? 😂😂😂 Guess full Canadian goes a bit too hard for normal English?
Red Cloud did win and did gain treaty concessions, there is a bit of context. The American Civil War had ended a little more than a year before and the vast majority of resources were still tied up in the Reconstruction. Red Cloud settled on a reservation and did not join Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull in the Lakota War that saw them defeated.
Sadly, the stronger you are, the stronger you think you are. The stronger you think you are, the lazier you get. And the lazier you get, the more likely to be surprised you are. Things change and when you have built up standing strength, it can be hard to adjust to that change quickly enough.
True enough, Zogar. I’m reminded of JFK’s peace speech at American University wherein he pointed out the sad irony that the two most powerful nations in the world were in the most danger.
Simon's statement that New Englan was reconsidering reunification with Great Britsin is overreach. Secession was certainty on the table, but submission to Great Britsin never was. A moderate Hartford Convention, seeking a regional based relationship with the rest of the nation, (via super-majorities in Congress and a weaker president) was proposed as a compromise but lost its vigor and slipped ftom history. No reunification talk ever made it out of the pub, if that alone didn't get you punched.
Being that the USA tends to walk away from wars without achieving a strategical victory or armistice it is much better to title videos like this as "Conflicts the USA failed to win".
Wow, that didn't take long. There is an inaccurate statement between 0:06 to 0:10 ... The allies would have still won WWII without the involvement of the USA; it would have taken years longer and cost untold millions of more lives, but the Allies were winning against Germany by December 1941.
yep, the axis were being pushed back on all fronts, rapidly losing oil needed to fuel navies, and it would still be almost a year before the first Americans even landed in Britain or Africa.
@@nas84payne Too far. Remember that without Lend Lease they would have had significantly less equipment. In aircraft alone the U.S. gave the Soviets 18,200 planes. Some some 30% of their air force and up to 40% of their tank forces were Lend Lease.
There's a big difference between tactical and strategic defeats. Tactically, the U.S. hasn't suffered any noteworthy defeats since Pearl Harbor. Strategically, the U.S. has a less than stellar track record. Whether through misguided motives, bad policies or sheer incompetence, the U.S. has often failed to meet broader strategic objectives in modern wars.
The U.S.A didn't win WW2. Allied victory would have been accomplished, although it would have taken longer, without their intervention. It was the Soviet juggernaut that assured the defeat of Nazi Germany.
@@jaybee9269 tell that to the defender of f Stalingrad and the final push by Zhukov. Also the Soviets paid the highest price in driving the Nazis back and gabbing more land than the Allies (getting beyond Berlin )
Another description I once heard on the War of 1812, 'was that neither the US, the UK, or Canada won the war but the Indigenous people of the Americas most certainly lost it.' The UK abandoned their indigenous allies and some like Tecumseh, who's confederacy could have been a potentially serious threat to the US, hadn't died in battle in 1813. Would certainly be interesting to see how Tecumseh might have altered peace negotiations or helped convince the British to ensure a large amount of his confederacy remained in tact following the war.
And then what? Sound more like snatching defeat out of the hands of victory. Also Bush only had UN backing to kick Saddam out of Kuwait and US would be on its own if UN was smart enough to not get dragged in.
The only failure in Afghanistan is that once they’d won, they tried nation building which was pointless and impossible. Should’ve won, and then said bye figure it out now.
He's the narrator. He has said himself that there are times when he just reads, and doesn't really register what he's reading. He has a whole team of writers that do the research and send him the scripts, another team that does the video editing, and more people to take care of advertising and all the other myriad details.
two of them aren't military failures on the US side. it took two years for Vietnam to fail after the US left, and Afghanistan just gave up when the US left
@@mbpaintballa Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq weren't even military defeats, they were political. The US military was never defeated by force of arms.
@@cambs0181 this is also very true. Politics starts wars, sends soldiers off to fight, all while telling them 'you can't use this weapon, you can't fight that way, there are rules '
But lost their souls in the process. _When it comes to real life warfare -- nobody ever wins._ What good is "winning" if the price your people had to pay was the destruction of the very things they were fighting to protect?
Past Korea, you could argue that most if not all of US wars have been those of global intervention and geopolitical oportunism. In other words, with very little "defense" justification. And at least for Vietnam, without the draft manpower to sustain the war effort would probably have been insufficient very quickly. But for all 3 cases, really poorly conceived in retrospect. No cohesive vision and effort to something that could be called a "win".
As a US veteran I find it interesting that this lists ruffled the feathers of so many suddenly "proud and patriotic" fellow citizens because I don't remember seeing any of you besides me on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln those 4 1/2 years I served onboard her,..or in Bagram, or Kandahar, or Zamboanga when the GWOT made it's way to the PI. In America,..in the 1980's we were so butt hurt about the loss in Vietnam and its complex ramifications that we had both Sylvester Stallone AND Chuck Norris "re-fight" those conflicts for us in Hollywood,.LoL! Also,..I was taught in High School that Vietnam was a quagmire and a military defeat and also that the Korean War was really a stalemate,.with am Armistice being signed to stop combat operations and create a line along the 38th parallel which essentially divided along the same geographic lines as it had been before the start of the conflict. Every great military force in history has experienced failure. Alexander the Great, Hannibal Barca, Ancient Rome,.Napolean,.etc etc etc,.. America doesn't need to be militarily undefeated to be "The Greatest country in the World",..it simply has to live up to its highest ideas.
I'm more annoyed at the bs about us losing 1812 (we didn't. The only objective not achieved in that war by the US was a side quest to annex Canada. That's a win by most standards.). That and Iraq. Considering we beat Saddam and Iraq is functioning (and allows America to hang out for anti-terror operations) how the hell did we lose that again? Your highschool teacher was frankly an idiot if he told you that nam was a military defeat, because militarily America didn't lose, S. Vietnam did 2 years after we left. Should we have been there? No. I'll give your teacher credit for the quagmire part (a quagmire caused by the French failing to keep communism out of 'nam).
And what exactly makes you think those people aren't veterans? Just because they don't like to brag about it to random people on TH-cam for internet points?
@mjames7674 He is just making shit up.A man who talks like that,as if an entire MILITARY wasn't holding his dumb ass up,has clearly never spent a minute in the service.He likely struggles to get his pants on in the morning lol
Like him or not Saddam Hussein had developed Iraq into a modern state with a good economy, excellent education, healthcare, infrastructure, etc. All America does is destroy. Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, etc.
For the vietnam colunfict it should be 58000 dead, physically wounded 150000,physiological screwed up unknown ptsd etc,my step grandmother and I can see the ptsd my grandad suffers from,and that not including the health concerns hes had due to agent orange,and being call baby killer etc when he came home
Also, there was a tremendous amount of drug addiction stemming from that war. The North sent a steady supply of Heroin and opium to military bases through locals making a buck.
We can win a war against anyone. What comes after that, not always so easy. I think if we've learned any lesson, it's that it's hard to change the world for the better at the barrel of a rifle. Maybe those resources we spend on wars could be better used on improving food security, access to clean water, etc
Why? Why would any of this cause you "pain"? Are you embarrassed ? I served 20 years in the USN,.including a handful of short deployments to Bagram and Kandahar. NO pain,.no shame,.no regrets,.it is what it is,..LoL Even Ancient Rome,..which is arguably the MOSt successful military power in history suffered some horrible defeats ( Hannibal )!! Also,..Alexander the Great and Napoleon had their sobering moments on the battlefield.
@@YaePublishing thats simply overlooks the fact that there was slavery in the first place and people of color were still treated badly after they were "freed"
If we're looking at the objectives countries had while entering war, Brittain lost WW2, as their main objectives were not met; Poland's position wasn't restored and Britain didn't maintain it's position as a world power
I think most historians would agree with you that Britain's victories in WW1 and WW2 were Pyhrric victories if anything. They survived the war and defeated Germany, but they lost their position as a military superpower.
Britain entered WW1 to kick Germany out of Belgium. Britain entered WW2 to kick Germany out of Poland. both of those objectives were achieved when the wars ended.
@@ktvindicare pretty sure the word Pyrrhic doesn't apply here. but Britain was already moving towards dismantling its empire before WW1, Australia and Canada had already been given independence to govern themselves, and both along with new Zealand and south Africa would become dominions, and India was already in talks before WW2 to do the same. frankly what people see with the commonwealth is what Britain was already heading towards voluntarily anyway, so the world wars speeding that up isn't much of a loss. also Britain built the empire with the military its still has, the world wars are basically the only time empire troops were used outside of their own countries.
ISIS and other terrorist groups didn't simply arise after the US withdrew from Iraq. The US occupation, easily our most disastrous foreign undertaking in modern history, was based on entirely false assumptions, lack of any contingency, and unprecedented, unchecked activities by private military contractors. It can be argued the nascent insurgency in a nation that under Hussein's tortuous fist had no possibility for such activity, was kicked into a full blast by the gruesome 2004 attack on Blackwater as it escorted a catering convoy through Fallujah. Every action taken by the Coalition Provisional Authority poured more fuel on the fire, especially de-Baathification It was at this time the first iteration was what became ISIS formed out of the remnants of al Qaeda in Iraq. Placed in hibernation by the surge, it sprung back to life soon after US withdrawal, adopting ISIS in 2013.
@nwj03a if you're implying my statement is inaccurate, please let me know what comparable events I missed. As I strive to get information from the most accurate sources, MSNBC isn't one of them.
De-Baathification was a terrible mistake. The Ba'athists were some of the people most likely to oppose extremism, if they had a place at the table, but they ended up completely excluded from society, which left them angry and with nothing to lose. A significant section of the population, many educated or ex-soldiers, they had no reason to support the new Iraq and every reason to help those who wanted to take it down.
I think many Americans would dispute the conclusions of this video, but you have to look at the eventual outcome of these conflicts; Vietnam becomes a unified communist country, Afghanistan returns to Taliban control, and Iraq becomes a chaotic, shambolic version of democracy, no you weren't militarily defeated as such, but the truth is you would still need to be fighting in these conflicts now to avoid the outcomes!!! We British were the same when you kicked us out, we hardly lost a battle but after Yorktown decided to give up, we could have struggled on for years but I think you have to accept at some point that some wars are unwinnable.
Were they failures based on the stated/alleged goals? Absolutely. Were they defeats for the U.S. military? Vietnam, you could argue either way. Afghanistan and Iraq were not.
@@Welverinyou could not argue that for Vietnam 🤦 you have access to infinite information at your fingertips is a minute of research really that hard?? In Vietnam the US lost 50k, soldiers, north Vietnam and viet Cong lost over 2 MILLION. To compare the two is mental delusion.
@@fertilerevitilizer7833 oh right, so I presume u r referring to body counts in Vietnam, which were totally reliable and accurate!! And yes English is very much my first language, tbh I don't what language is or what point ur actually making but can only assume ur a Trump supporter!!!
In other words, politicians from both sides of the aisle got their grubby hands in each of these matters and sent our boys to their doom (their own sons never reaching the front lines). Too many military commanders have had political aspirations and/or ties to the Military Industrial Complex to seek their fortunes. Our military members can hold their heads high, though. May God bless them all.
I watched Ken Burns documentary on Vietnam. Found it interesting that the N.V.s rich kids and connected parents' kids were sent to college in the Soviet Union and China and not to the war. Once again, Rich Man's war, poor man's fight."
Can you do a video on Maharaja Ranjit Singh? I would recommend for you to look into his story. He came from nothing and then lead his army from the age where of around 12, and then became the king of the Sikh empire. An unbelievable story
didn't know any of that stuff about the war of 1812 the part about the US wanting to annex canada and some states seriously thinking of seceding was a surprise also had forgotten that the congress cut-off of military aid to south vietnam was a major factor in the south's sudden collapse and defeat⚛😀
While the US was still pulling out of Nam it was still pouring in millions in military aide, on top of what they already had. Materially speaking the South had plenty to defend itself. Just like Afghanistan later, a lot of it went to corrupt officials. We paid for S.V. troops that gave a kick back to their officers and never showed up, except for pay day or they didn't exist at all. The same thing would happen in Afghanistan. A lot of the officials that were put into power by the US were the same ones the Taliban had over thrown due to their corruption.
thanks of course that is right the thieu regime was incredibly corrupt seem to recall he fled the country with a planeload of gold bars@@zephyer-gp1ju ⚛😀
I knew this video was gonna have so many issues on it. War of 1812: Wrong, the US was not trying to annex British North America. This is stated in the President's declaration of War against Britain as well as proven in evidence in 2 prior votes in the lead up to the war by the US Senate and House of Representatives on what the US would do if they ever gained position of British North America. In both cases the people who wanted to annex British North America didn't even have the votes to get their argument onto the floor to argue that the US should annex the land if it ever gained control of it. So, yes, there were people in the US who wanted control of what would become Canada. But the overwhelming majority of US lawmakers and citizens did not want the people living in British North America to become citizens of the US. And this is because of the large Catholic population in British North America. The US, at that time still had very few Catholics living within the country and they had the same opinion of Catholics that the majority of British people did. Which to keep it YT safe, was they VERY much did not like them (and I am a Catholic). The US hate/dislike of Catholics would start to dissipate in the 1840's forward as Irish Catholics started to immigrate to the US in large numbers. The US's primary goal in the war of 1812 was to get the UK to stop supporting the Native American's in their effort to create a new Indian nation in US territory around Michigan. The second US goal was to stop British impressment of US sailors. Which while the British didn't agree to that in the peace deal they did never enact such actions again. So the US completed their goals in the war of 1812, the US got things out of the war, the British didn't. The reason the US invaded British North American territory was to capture it and use it as a bargaining chip with the British to end the war and get what the US wanted in the war quickly. Vietnam War: A much better argument than the War of 1812. But still for the Vietnam war it is easy to argue the US WON the war. There is a 2 and half year gap between when the US made peace till when N Vietnam attacked again. During those 2 and half years the US had gained everything they wanted in the peace deal that ended the "American War" as it is called in Vietnam. The US kept South Vietnam as a capitalist democracy and stopped the spread of communism in South East Asia. That is what the US wanted and why the US entered into the fighting in Vietnam. When the war started up again 2 and half years after peace was made that was a separate war that the US was not a party to. Should the US of intervened in the war and helped South Vietnam per the terms of the Paris Peace Accord? Yes. But not getting involved in a war your ally losses doesn't mean the US lost that war. People try to set Vietnam up as one giant war from 1945 until 1978 when in reality it is many different wars. Some that the communist Vietnamese won and some that they lost. In the end the communist's did win and complete all of their goals. It took all of those wars to gain their independence as a united nation and then their wars with China to remain an independent nation. I'd argue (and history is on my side now with this) that they would have been much better off to have wanted to unite more under the Democratic/capitalist South Vietnam. What Simon said within the video on what happened to South Vietnam after the US left was correct though. Ford did want the US to defend our ally and the Democrats refused his want to send military supplies to South Vietnam. But that doesn't mean the US lost the physical war. That war ended with a technical US "victory". Of course the end result of what happened later made the war a loss for the US. And what the US put into the war didn't at all justify what the US got out of the war. Even if the US was able to secure a democratic/Capitalist Vietnam for half or even ALL of Vietnam, the cost the US had to spend on their freedom was not worth it for the people of the US. But that is something the US does. But that is just something the US does. The US wants to spread freedom(democracy) around the world and when the US sees people fighting for that they want to try to help those people. It is a noble and undercredited aspect of the United States. If the US wanted to the US could isolate itself from the rest of the world and the US could be fine forever. But since WW2 the US has decided it is going to try to help the world and spread freedom to people around the world. Should the US stop that and let Ukraine for example die? Just let Russia take what they want and force them to live under the government Russia picks for them because they are stronger? Should the US let China take Taiwan and take the freedom the people of Taiwan have away? Should the US let the Taliban take all rights away from the women of their nation? Afghanistan War: The war completed it's primary goal which was to destroy Al Qaeda. The US didn't care that the Taliban was in control of Afghanistan until they refused to hand over Al Qaeda (better to say, the US didn't care that the Taliban was in control to the point they wanted to get involved in that nation). That lead to the US trying to make Afghanistan a democracy after the military invasion was completed. The military goals were completed. As stated above under the Vietnam war argument, the US wanted to make Afghanistan a democracy so that all the people (particularly the women) had if not equal rights, at least some rights. It was a good and noble thing for the US AND the other NATO nations to have fought for. But at some point you have to look at things at the cost it is putting on the US. If the US spends all it's resources fighting for the rights of one nation that limits what the US can do in the future. It had to at some point come down to what the people of Afghanistan wanted. Not enough of them were willing to fight for the rights of their women. There is a large amount of their population that don't care about equal rights (especially for their women). So let them live how they want. It should sicken everyone the way they treat women within that country still to this day. But that can't be the focus of the US to the point that it weakens the US in potential wars against near pier adversaries. So long as the Taliban don't make Afghanistan a sanctuary for terrorists again the US, NATO and other Western thinking nations should just let those people live under the rule of medieval barbarians who treat women as property. They have to care about how they are living more then the West does. Iraq War: So easy to counter. Iraq is still a democracy under the government the US setup for them after the US military and allies easily toppled Saddam's evil government. The goal of that war, to remove Saddam from power, was completed and done easily so. The reason's why the war started and if it was the correct decision to make to invade is another argument entirely. But it is 100% FALSE that the US didn't find WMD's in Iraq. This is the most non-covered story in modern world history. The US government under Obama admitted that the US government had found THOUSANDS of chemical weapons that Saddam was hiding and many US soldiers and Iraqi workers were even injured from them while moving them and destroying them. The reason the US didn't admit this right from the start was because the design of those chemical weapons was American made, the designs given to Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war by the CIA. This isn't some secret story hidden on the CIA website either. This is a story that was covered by every major newspaper and website in the world in 2014. From the NY Times, Wash Post, Fox News, Yahoo, Al Jazeera, you name it and they covered it. Just Google "chemical weapons were found in iraq" and pick the article you want to read about it. We went for years saying nothing was found in Iraq that everyone still believes that despite it being so easily countered. Lastly, ISIS being formed in Iraq after the US left doesn't make the Iraq war a loss or a failure. The US was just invited back to Iraq after Obama pulled the troops out and the US and other allies went and helped the new Iraqi democratic government fight ISIS and sustain themselves so that some nutty terrorist nation was not created in the gap territory between Syria and Iraq.
I've talked to you about this before in other YT threads lol. You are again 100% correct in regards to the Vietnam war. As someone originally from Vietnam I can confirm that we are not taught the American war and the Unification war are the samething. The war between just North Vietnam and just South Vietnam is considered a separate war and the last war to uniting Vietnam under independence. As you, said, we then had to defend that independance against China in 2 seperate wars after that.
As an Italian I do think you are correct about the US not getting the credit it deserves for essentially being the nation brave enough to defend freedom around the world. Before the US got involved in world affairs the world was getting more and more violent as time went on until WW2. After that, the US stayed involved in world affairs and has brought about by far the most peaceful and prosperous time in human history.
Actually the 1812 war had nothing to do with the British stopping taking American sailors prisoner and was never once talked about in the peace negotiations. What stopped it, in fact, was the British finishing off it's war with France so they had no reason to take anyone prisoner from then on. Furthermore the Americans destroyed the Indians, and with them gone, no need for the British to help them which again is why this was not discussed in any peace negotiations. So by your logic, America started a war to fight things that solved themselves, great success!!
@@MrSniperfox29 What? The War of 1812 "had nothing to do with British forcing US sailor's into the British Navy"? That is either one of the most unhistorical replies I have ever heard on TH-cam and that is saying something for this site's comment section or you misworded that reply terribly. As far as peace negotiations go, I said within my comment that the US didn't get it in writing that the British would stop action impressment. As I said that was because the US didn't have as much of a upper hand in the negotiations as they wanted to. Had the US taken British North America it would have been an easy addition to the peace deal in return for the territory as was the initial plan at the start of the war. Either way though the British stopped the practice after the War of 1812 because they rightly agreed that the practice was not worth the cost of another war with the US. A war which the greatest army leader in British history, the Duke of Wellington guaranteed would result in the fall of British North America. He made it clear to the King, Regency and Parliament that if another war wit the US began after that peace deal that the British would not be able to hold onto their remaining territory in North America. The US military had gotten stronger by that point and Britain couldn't station and supply enough troops to defend such a massive territory right in the US's backyard to say. The US had no desire to annex that territory though as it was made up of a large Catholic population and the British never gave the US reason to want to go to war with them again after the war of 1812. The dispute of where the border lies in the Pacific North West was the closest things ever came to a 3rd US-British war and that dispute was decided peacefully as neither side was looking for a war at that point in time. And the war was a success from the US point of view. It first off of course destroyed the Indian confederacy which the British were greatly supporting in order to try to make a 3rd nation between the US and British territory that they could use to play off the US. If the British really wanted to give the Native Americans a nation of their own they could have done that within the massive territory they held in British North America. They weren't doing their actions out of pity or want to make an Indian nation. They were doing to to damage the power of the US. Second, the US had no way to way when the Napoleonic wars were going to end and when the British were going to stop stealing US citizens to served in their navy. The Wars between France, Britain and th erest of Europe by that point had been going on for almost 20 years. This was a complaint the US had had on the British for many years by that point but the British actions in support of Tecumseh and his Indian confederacy put things beyond the line and caused the US declaration of war. The war is what stopped these British actions. It showed the world that the US couldn't just be messed with and would take insults and damage to the nation from European powers. Britain would not have taken say Sweden or Spain stealing their sailors from ships and forcing them to fight for the British navy. Britain would also not and didn't accept France trying to make Scotland an independent nation again. The BRitish would also not accept say Russia funding and influencing a rebellion to create a new nation within modern Pakistan or India. The war was fully justified and completed the goals for which it was started and most importantly it showed the world that the US was not just going to be some "sort of" nation on the other side of the world that had no real power and wouldn't be willing to fight for it's rights or be insulted/taken advantage of in ways that no European nation would ever accept.
...Nobody tell them that we specifically held back and didn't actually use wartime tactics against Taliban. Nobody remind them that civilians are just as much targets as the soldiers are, in a proper war. After all, how many civilians died in the London Blitz? How many died in the Battle of Berlin? How many died in the Siege of Japan? ...Yeah. As much as people want to call these "wars", they're not. They're peacekeeping missions.
@@feargal2433 ...You think we couldn't have turned those countries into glass floors if we wanted to? We haven't be in an actual war since the 40s. If we wanted these people gone, there would be nothing anybody in the world could have done to stop us. I swear, ain't nobody aware of how a real war is fought, anymore. Too busy guzzling down information fed to them by the uninformed and unaware.
Lakota Indian sovereignty over the Powder River country endured for eight years until renewed US interest in Great Sioux Reservation land due to the discovery of gold in the Black Hills, leading to the Great Sioux War of 1876 and violations of the treaty. In a 1980 Supreme Court case, United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, the court ruled that tribal lands covered under the treaty had been by the US government, and the tribe was owed compensation plus interest. As of 2018 this amounted to more than $1 billion.
Fetterman, Grattan, and Custer are three names in the United States that are synonymous with military stupidity (though Fetterman might be the exception, as new evidence shows his superior, Colonel Chapman, was the one responsible for the Fetterman Fight). Grattan's decision to launch an attack in the midst of negotiations with 20 men and 2 cannons against a camp of hundreds of Cheyenne was utter folly and everyone knows about how Custer led a 215-man battalion to their deaths.
The Australian military, of which I was a member, has been involved in a number of US conflicts since WWII. In the role of an auxiliary force used in a Ranger capacity when attached, and with largely autonomous TAORs when detached. Our TAORs, primarily Phuoc Tuy in Vietnam, and Oruzgan in Afghanistan, were pacified very quickly. The main reason being extensive experience in counterinsurgency. Something that before Vietnam the US had never done. And failed to learn from Vietnam. The big unit, conventional war mentality. Which doesn't work with counterinsurgency. British/Australian/New Zealand forces successfully defeated the insurgencies in Malaya and Borneo in short order. Adoption of our tactics in Vietnam certainly would have given a different face to the war. Don't get me wrong. I am not deriding the US forces. I have trained a lot with them and have been deployed with them. Their urban warfare especially was second to none. Green role not so much. An absolute pleasure to train and deploy with (especially the Marines). Tactically and strategically the US brass have been arse-about-face in most of the conflicts since WWII. In Vietnam especially there was practically no strategy. You cannot win a conflict without a comprehensive, clear strategy with associated indicators of success. Throw in the fact the the civilian populaces in Western and Anglo-spheric countries are largely spineless (with many subversive elements), and there is no way to win. Especially with televised conflict. If the bombing of Dresden and firebombing of Japan had been televised in WWII as per Vietnam, no doubt many civilians on our side would have turned against the war- losing it at home as was the case with Vietnam onwards. Politicians in democracy want votes. Fighting wars that the populace has lost the spine for is not a vote-winner. Not to mention that it is the Military Industrial Complex/Deep State that runs our countries (especially the US). They care about profit. Not winning wars. They want their weapons tested, upgraded, and a killing made off of their manufacture and sale. As an ex-soldier it pains me to say it- WWI onwards were manufactured. For profit. Those who Served deserve and should receive the utmost respect. It isn't their fault that their patriotism was used to fill the pockets of corporations.
America is a dream, an ideal, not an empire. Empires invade, conquer, and subjugate. That's not what we've done for a very long time. We did not subjugate Japan, or Mexico, or North and South Korea, or any other nation we've been in conflict with. We also do not steal resources contrary to what meme logic tells you. Look up the numbers.
@@WaddedBliss I understand perfectly and disagree thoroughly. Just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't mean they don't understand perfectly well. The world law matters, that's what pervades the world. Our commitment to ourselves and our allies is a deterrent not oppression. Only the wrong sort would feel oppressed by not being able to invade the free world. The world rules the world. The international agreements are international. Maritime law and borders are internationally approved and should be internationally protected. It shouldn't always be America while everyone else stands around shouting "i said no, stop. If you don't stop I say no again". World order takes the world to uphold. You a Putin fan or something?
@@WaddedBliss Yeah we sell people culture and you're entirely welcome to stop buying it. Any time now. I'm sure you'll get tired of our films and music and clothes one day... There's your 'empire'. You can strike us for Hawaii. You can strike us for stealing half of Mexico back in the 1840s. But we don't expand anymore. In fact we're probably the prime signatory in the modern status quo of 'no one should be expanding anymore'. If being a merchant 'empire' is us being naughty and you don't like it? We also sell real fucking tiny violins.
Great vid. I was thinking that maybe you could do something on englands 4 centuries of failures, and how they have been thrown off of every continent on the planet. Maybe you could even do something about the inbreeds. You being a brit...
Another great video, Simon. Do you enjoy the comments by all the armchair warriors as much as I do? You know, the ones which the closest they've come to being in the military is watching an ad to join up?
Just so everyone knows, the American military and the NATO allies that went with us are not responsible for losing the Afghan war. American diplomats are, they dropped the baton in ending the war on our terms. The NATO military was largely withdrawn from major conflicts and battles. If anything, the place was a giant testing ground for the practical applications of weapons, surveillance equipment, and strategies against guerrilla fighters. President Biden and his administration had the greatest diplomatic "high ground" anyone was ever going to get coming in to the Afghanistan situation. He could either enforce the Taliban's side of the agreement the Trump administration originally negotiated or cite the current non compliance of the Taliban to oust Al Qaeda from their territory as reason to scrap it and create his own diplomacy and take credit for ending a war started by 9/11. Instead he gave in to what the Taliban wanted by pulling out without anything in return and did so with many of our units not even doing a proper turnover or notice with Afghan forces. That left Afghan forces blind and allowed the Taliban and Al Qaeda to quickly takeover. If you ever wanted to know what "Drop everything and GTFO" looks like for the military, the Afghanistan pull out was a textbook definition. Not to mention the fact that President Biden lied to everyone and even got the Afghanistan President to lie that there was no concern that the country would fall back into terrorist hands. And before anyone chimes in that it's the Afghanistan citizens problem to fight back, let me remind you that the population was heavily subjugated through fear of execution. That mentality to not fight back against the Taliban has been ingrained in them for generations and standing against them is a foreign concept. It was always going to take a couple generations to undo that indoctrination and teach regular citizens they do not have to be afraid and to fend for themselves against Al Qaeda and Taliban oppression. That's on top of shaping the discipline into their security forces. So now, instead of finishing the job it is only a matter of time before another 9/11 happens. It does not have to be the USA either. It can be any NATO member that invokes article 5 and we are obligated to answer that call.
It's no longer a story that the world is experiencing a global economic downturn, I'm so happy that I've been receiving $64,000 from my $15,000 investment every 14 days.
The crypto market is highly profitable with an expert broker just like Janis Claire Morin. I got recommended to her and since then my financial life has been a success
Yea the whole point is the US failed to defeat the Taliban or the North Vietnamese. It doesn't matter what happened in the end those 2 got what they wanted and the US didn't so they FAILED. Let me say it again, they were DEFEATED. Just ask General Mark Milley, even he was brave enough to admit the defeat.
US soldiers won about 98% of encounters in Afghanistan. Last couple of years taliban was quietly sitting and waiting. Afghans decided not to fight and lost war in Afghanistan. In Iraq… US won the war, some years later elected government asked US to go away, and US soldiers packed up and returned back to US…. No, really, how else you expect democratic victory over dictatorship to look like?
Yep. Except we did contribute to the fall of Afghanistan. It was our war after all, not the Afghan security forces. The military was done, politicians and diplomats failed Afghanistan.
Yeah, the Iraq one's a bit of a head scratcher. We didn't lose there. Hell, they still have us around in case they need support with terror groups. If we'd "lost" in Iraq they would have told us to leave completely.
This is not a good metric. Vietnam war casualties: 1-3 million Vietnamese, about 300K from Laos and Cambodia. Vs. about 60K American soldiers. That's about a 50:1 ratio, or the same 2% you cite. Only a fool would claim a USA win there. In both cases, the regime that fought the invaders outlived the foreign military intervention.
You have to blame politics for Vietnam because the Airmen begged and pleaded to be able to take out the Sam missiles when they started installing them. Yet they were denied permission until there were hundreds of Sam sites and it was too late. The US military did not lose in Vietnam the politicians forced the United States military to lose. The United States politicians forced 58,000 Americans to die in Vietnam because they absolutely refused to allow the United States military to do what it was and still is very capable of and that was and is destroying the enemy.
I am assured, by an American who in no way was bitter about being corrected, that they did not lose the war of 1812, in fact they decided to graciously offer Britain peace because they realised the soon to become Canada was not worthy of becoming America and instead they had decided to civilise Mexico instead. He assured me, with absolutely no profanity or death threats, that in no way were the Americans journey west and south anything but honourable taking of land that nobody else was on, and in no way was it like the Germans going east for living space. In fact, there were zero people in the American west and Mexico, in fact, did not exist at all He assured me, in the nicest way possible, that America is the best and has, in fact, never lost a war at all.
With the War of 1812, it’s important to remember that Canada/Britain also failed their goals in the War and that the U.S. burnt down Hampton (which was Canada’s Capital at the time). So the War of 1812 is seen as a draw because nobody really succeeded at anything in the war
Well, considering the British burned our capital and my hometown Buffalo, I'd say they won. So, I want to know why our national anthem is still a song from that war, terrible to sing or at times hear it sung? Time for us to switch to America The Beautiful for the next century or so. As to Afghanistan, I'd say we just joined a very long line stretching back to Alexander the Great, and say: weren't the British in that same long line? Once or twice, wasn't it Simon? Oops, sorry, I was wrong, it was three times.
How did they win when we got them to stop impressing our sailors which was the original war goal. Also their veteran troops that fought Napoleon got their ass kicked in New Orleans.
Yea no one is saying the British didn't lose, they were absolutely destroyed too. I've found that Americans get more salty when you mention Afghanistan defeat than the Russians or British. Americans entire pride is in their military because of their lack of cultural heritage than other countries like Russia or Britain.
Vietnam war wasn't just the American war Australia, New Zealand, France and England were also involved but as normal Americans always forget that they weren't the only country involved just like in the first and second world wars and Korea
Merely a tactical setback in a strategic victory over Japan. there were others in the Pacific theater, but the outcome of the war in that theater was never really in question, once the US decided to remove Japan's presence in anywhere BUT Japan.
@@Operator8282 agreed pearl harbour is only one part of the overall war the US more than made up for in other engagements as an Australian one that is special to my heart is there victory in the battle of the coral sea which forever united the US and Australia
Any modern military incursion, engagement or exchange can be in fact labeled as outright failure. A defeat of diplomacy. A breakdown of mutual cultural & geopolitical understanding. & Ultimately-a Loss, that of precious irreplaceable Life. War in & of itself, doesn't just occur, @ it's core-it is the failure of communication that makes a friend become foe.
I agree with all but the last one. Yes it is absolutely true that our pullout led to the creation of ISIS but, militarily speaking, the war was a success. Saddam was overthrown extremely quickly and American forces were able to cripple the Iraqi air defense network in a matter of hours. With the capitulation of Saddams Government to American military might the war was over.
Cry me a river. Go into the country thinking it will be easy and fooling your stupid population who doesn't know shit about history to also believe that, get defeated, run away in humiliation and then cope.
Agreed. I usually really like Fact Boy’s videos, but this takes 4 political blunders and calls them military defeats, even though militarily they were resounding victories. The other “defeat” was a case of being ambushed by a numerically (and vastly at that) superior foe. A military defeat is on the battle field. A political defeat is in the office of a politician. These were very definitely the latter.
@@PrimericanIdolAfghanistan was a diplomatic defeat. Iraq was done and we won. Vietnam had the military turning things around, only the politicians decided to pull out. So, cope harder with facts.
American here. Amazing the Seminole wars wasn't featured here. The Seminoles were the only Indigenous tribe not completely removed from their ancestral lands. The Red Cloud war was a picnic compared to the Seminole wars.
Just because around 200 of them manage to hide away in the swamps of Florida doesn't change the fact that almost all were deported out of Florida. So no, it was no victory.
Yes. And of course, the "Buying it back, one acre at a time" plan started there, didn't it?
There’s two movies about the Seminole wars….”Distant Drums” 1951 with Gary Cooper and “Seminole Uprising” 1955 with George Montgomery….both showed little of the culture or the way of life of the people and was typical Hollywood Indians v cavalry fare…
The indigenous peoples deserve their land back. All of them! 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
@@benjaminjenkins394 Why?
The real roots of Vietnam stretch way further back - to the year 1919, when a young Ho Chi Min visited Paris and implored both President Wilson as well as British leadership to recognize and support Vietnamese independence from Colonial French administration. Had they listened to him, they could have kept Ho, and by extension Vietnam, solidly in the Western orbit. We never understood that the Vietnamese saw the war as a struggle for their independence, rather than an ideological proxy battle between the East and West.
We should have told the French to kick sand and not gotten involved
True. The South was seen by the North as still being a colony.
Many conflicts actually have their roots in the WWI era and decisions made back then.
They also signed the 1973 Paris Peace Accords to end the external war with the US. As far as they were concerned the war was a Civil War and they knew for a fact that the South Vietnamese government were hiding behind the military power of the US Military. And that fighting the US Military wasn't an option.
As even their officers admit they never won a single battle against US Military forces.
Thus it was a strategic move to get the US out of the way.
Everyone knew the South Vietnamese Military wasn't up to snuff and would lose. But the Politicians made it into an ideological war which was the failure then blamed the military instead of attacking responsibility.
Well the French were never going to do that and the only one that would somewhat support it was the U.S but we entered late to the war so we could not do much.
As an American, I can say that tackling my laundry pile has ended in my defeat multiple times now.
Facts
Hahaha
Every single time.
Combined arms tactics may help.
And dishes that terrorist group of dishes I don't know
The War of 1812 is big in Canada. I visited Fort York in Toronto and the guides talked a lot about it. I’m from Texas and truthfully knew more about the Battle of San Jacinto which liberated Texas from Mexico than I knew about the War of 1812.
Some exhibits in Toronto mentioned that the Indigenous peoples had a representative at the Peace treaty and were hoping for some concessions too between Canada, Britain and the Indigenous tribes of Canada. Of course that didn’t work out. You might want to discuss the Indigenous view of the War of 1812 and how they were treated at the negotiating table. Actually you could do a larger discussion about how the indigenous often helped the British, Americans or Canadians during the different conflicts through the years and then were basically screwed.
Yes thank you for asking. I want to see history told from the Native perspective. me too man. I am Ojibwe and Woodland Cree. My family has fought in every major war since the Invasion of Canada and the Burning of York in the War of 1812 just to be screwed over by the Crown.
War of 1812 the big loser were the indigenous peoples
Y'all stole Texas from Mexico.... Are you trying to claim that was a liberation???
The war of 1812 was an impossible victory for Canada if it wasn't for the indigenous fighters and their relationship with General Brock before he was killed in battle. The indigenous people knew the land, how and when to attack. The indigenous people have been continuously screwed by Canada
About the War of 1812: not only did the British invade Washington DC, but they also burned the original White House to the ground (1600 Pennsylvania Blvd is not the original address) and while doing so they took George Washington's desk as a trophy. It was not returned until the Clinton presidency, mostly because prior presidents did not believe the desk was real. Washington's desk was left in Canada for almost 185 years, thus it was Canada who tried returning the desk multiple times during the Twentieth Century.
The burning of DC was quite pointless and had no impact on the war really. The whole goal of the Chesapeake Campaign was to drive US forces out of the NW Territory, and divert them south. Instead, US planners diverted most of their resources to Baltimore where the British actually meant to attack. This is why President Madison had to hastily assemble a militia to defend Bladensburg, the real Army was at Baltimore. The burning of the white house specifically brought heavy censure on British Parliament members, with opposition PMs actually making fun of them for thinking they had actually achieved something notable.
By 1815, the US controlled most of Upper Canada, had defeated Britain's Native American allies, had destroyed the Anglo-Spanish alliance in Florida, and had defeated all of Britian's invasion attempts.
The Iraq war was, within the "western world" also a very debated topic. A large amount of western countries opposed it, including France that notably threatened to use its veto power
yes but the world prefers hearing every white person was for it. it helps project the racism idealogy
Both Germany & France opposed the 2003 War in Iraq and refused to send their troops.
@@IAMJEFFREY-cw9ns Yes, and in one of the ridiculous callbacks to the First World War, whereby the United States changed the hamburger to Salisbury steak, the United States government declared that French fries would be called "Freedom Fries," a euphemism that would prove to have no real power to it, just like the entire conflict. And of course, the French were proven right in seeing the war as nothing more than a personal vendetta for former president George W. Bush as well as a political powerplay that would monstrously backfire.
The US didnt get the Nato votes for the Iraq war, thats why only a handful of nations participated...
"We didn't lose, we just failed to win." - George McClellan, Oversimplified lol
😳 Rest in power, Red Cloud ✊️ What a boss.
And Oceola, too.
I can't believe there are still people out there who think the US has never lost a war.
Or that Trump never lost an election. Which begs a question, if he runs again without admitting defeat won't that set him up as a 3-termer ? Unconstitutional !
Statistically we haven’t
@@notmyrealname1698You also never won one without France or Britain helping you.
@@notmyrealname1698 What's that old saying, " There's lies, damn lies and then there are statistics. "
Big difference between losing and walking away... Unfortunately we have the attention span of gnats and no pressure on our borders to incentivise the civilians to stick with anything longer than a few years.
0:35 - Chapter 1 - Red cloud's war
4:05 - Chapter 2 - The war of 1812
7:05 - Chapter 3 - The vietnam war
10:25 - Chapter 4 - The afghanistan war
13:05 - Chapter 5 - The Iraq war
Funny how he doesn't mention body count.
@@fertilerevitilizer7833Body count doesn’t mean you win a war 😂
@@mattyreynolds4243 it doesn't mean the military was defeated either, it means the politicians were.
Korean War.
One basic fact about guerilla warfare that the US never seems to grasp is that those waging are aware that it is usually not possible to win outright militarily, so the strategy is centered on not losing, and continuing to not lose until some external factor such as a political shift or intervention from another power. And this has proven effective time and time again.
I knew this video was gonna have so many issues on it.
War of 1812: Wrong, the US was not trying to annex British North America. This is stated in the President's declaration of War against Britain as well as proven in evidence in 2 prior votes in the lead up to the war by the US Senate and House of Representatives on what the US would do if they ever gained position of British North America. In both cases the people who wanted to annex British North America didn't even have the votes to get their argument onto the floor to argue that the US should annex the land if it ever gained control of it. So, yes, there were people in the US who wanted control of what would become Canada. But the overwhelming majority of US lawmakers and citizens did not want the people living in British North America to become citizens of the US. And this is because of the large Catholic population in British North America. The US, at that time still had very few Catholics living within the country and they had the same opinion of Catholics that the majority of British people did. Which to keep it YT safe, was they VERY much did not like them (and I am a Catholic). The US hate/dislike of Catholics would start to dissipate in the 1840's forward as Irish Catholics started to immigrate to the US in large numbers.
The US's primary goal in the war of 1812 was to get the UK to stop supporting the Native American's in their effort to create a new Indian nation in US territory around Michigan. The second US goal was to stop British impressment of US sailors. Which while the British didn't agree to that in the peace deal they did never enact such actions again. So the US completed their goals in the war of 1812, the US got things out of the war, the British didn't. The reason the US invaded British North American territory was to capture it and use it as a bargaining chip with the British to end the war and get what the US wanted in the war quickly.
Vietnam War: A much better argument than the War of 1812. But still for the Vietnam war it is easy to argue the US WON the war. There is a 2 and half year gap between when the US made peace till when N Vietnam attacked again. During those 2 and half years the US had gained everything they wanted in the peace deal that ended the "American War" as it is called in Vietnam. The US kept South Vietnam as a capitalist democracy and stopped the spread of communism in South East Asia. That is what the US wanted and why the US entered into the fighting in Vietnam. When the war started up again 2 and half years after peace was made that was a separate war that the US was not a party to. Should the US of intervened in the war and helped South Vietnam per the terms of the Paris Peace Accord? Yes. But not getting involved in a war your ally losses doesn't mean the US lost that war. People try to set Vietnam up as one giant war from 1945 until 1978 when in reality it is many different wars. Some that the communist Vietnamese won and some that they lost. In the end the communist's did win and complete all of their goals. It took all of those wars to gain their independence as a united nation and then their wars with China to remain an independent nation. I'd argue (and history is on my side now with this) that they would have been much better off to have wanted to unite more under the Democratic/capitalist South Vietnam. What Simon said within the video on what happened to South Vietnam after the US left was correct though. Ford did want the US to defend our ally and the Democrats refused his want to send military supplies to South Vietnam. But that doesn't mean the US lost the physical war. That war ended with a technical US "victory". Of course the end result of what happened later made the war a loss for the US. And what the US put into the war didn't at all justify what the US got out of the war. Even if the US was able to secure a democratic/Capitalist Vietnam for half or even ALL of Vietnam, the cost the US had to spend on their freedom was not worth it for the people of the US. But that is something the US does. But that is just something the US does. The US wants to spread freedom(democracy) around the world and when the US sees people fighting for that they want to try to help those people. It is a noble and undercredited aspect of the United States. If the US wanted to the US could isolate itself from the rest of the world and the US could be fine forever. But since WW2 the US has decided it is going to try to help the world and spread freedom to people around the world. Should the US stop that and let Ukraine for example die? Just let Russia take what they want and force them to live under the government Russia picks for them because they are stronger? Should the US let China take Taiwan and take the freedom the people of Taiwan have away? Should the US let the Taliban take all rights away from the women of their nation?
Afghanistan War: The war completed it's primary goal which was to destroy Al Qaeda. The US didn't care that the Taliban was in control of Afghanistan until they refused to hand over Al Qaeda (better to say, the US didn't care that the Taliban was in control to the point they wanted to get involved in that nation). That lead to the US trying to make Afghanistan a democracy after the military invasion was completed. The military goals were completed. As stated above under the Vietnam war argument, the US wanted to make Afghanistan a democracy so that all the people (particularly the women) had if not equal rights, at least some rights. It was a good and noble thing for the US AND the other NATO nations to have fought for. But at some point you have to look at things at the cost it is putting on the US. If the US spends all it's resources fighting for the rights of one nation that limits what the US can do in the future. It had to at some point come down to what the people of Afghanistan wanted. Not enough of them were willing to fight for the rights of their women. There is a large amount of their population that don't care about equal rights (especially for their women). So let them live how they want. It should sicken everyone the way they treat women within that country still to this day. But that can't be the focus of the US to the point that it weakens the US in potential wars against near pier adversaries. So long as the Taliban don't make Afghanistan a sanctuary for terrorists again the US, NATO and other Western thinking nations should just let those people live under the rule of medieval barbarians who treat women as property. They have to care about how they are living more then the West does.
Iraq War: So easy to counter. Iraq is still a democracy under the government the US setup for them after the US military and allies easily toppled Saddam's evil government. The goal of that war, to remove Saddam from power, was completed and done easily so. The reason's why the war started and if it was the correct decision to make to invade is another argument entirely. But it is 100% FALSE that the US didn't find WMD's in Iraq. This is the most non-covered story in modern world history. The US government under Obama admitted that the US government had found THOUSANDS of chemical weapons that Saddam was hiding and many US soldiers and Iraqi workers were even injured from them while moving them and destroying them. The reason the US didn't admit this right from the start was because the design of those chemical weapons was American made, the designs given to Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war by the CIA. This isn't some secret story hidden on the CIA website either. This is a story that was covered by every major newspaper and website in the world in 2014. From the NY Times, Wash Post, Fox News, Yahoo, Al Jazeera, you name it and they covered it. Just Google "chemical weapons were found in iraq" and pick the article you want to read about it. We went for years saying nothing was found in Iraq that everyone still believes that despite it being so easily countered. Lastly, ISIS being formed in Iraq after the US left doesn't make the Iraq war a loss or a failure. The US was just invited back to Iraq after Obama pulled the troops out and the US and other allies went and helped the new Iraqi democratic government fight ISIS and sustain themselves so that some nutty terrorist nation was not created in the gap territory between Syria and Iraq.
They also rely on the protection of various western agreements and conventions which ties the hands of developed countries military, while obeying none of the laws themselves
Not really. The US is only beholden to international law if it wants to be. And it often isn't. Which is admittedly not unique to the US. @@CMP-st5wh
what ever makes you feel warm and fuzzy buddy@@PhillyPhanVinny
@@griggzzy1058 You could instead try to make a counter argument then make a useless reply back.
Some have said, "We didn't lose the war, we lost the peace." I'm a bit surprised that they didn't cover the US in Africa and Italy during WW 2, where we had some real losses.
One historian spoke of the War of 1812, "The US didn't win, the British didn't win, the Canadians won. They became more of country due to that war."
I have always wondered why the British didn't go ahead and bring more to bear on the US. I assumed that after 20 years of fighting Napoleon they were tired of war.
20 years of fighting Napoleon, and 40 years before that, a decade of fighting the French in both Europe and North America. Where, when they asked the incredibly corrupt colonies to merely pay for *part* of the defence of said colonies, were conned into revolting by the upper crust of the colonies, including a few of the founding fathers.
Cause we are still a colony, that’s why. They left but didn’t leave. Just like they left India, but still there. They learned the trick of economic control to rule the world.
The bankers won the war of 1812. The entire point of the war was to get the US back under the control of the bankers. The 2nd bank of the US was created after the war and lasted 20 years until Andrew Jackson killed it. Then Lincoln tried to create a new national currency and then he died. Kennedy also tried to do the same based on silver. Then he died just like Lincoln. Coincidence, not likely.
We were more important as a trading partner. Relations were basically normalized right after the Revolution, and trade was so lucrative that the New England states almost seceeded in protest over 1812 because it was so economically disruptive.
@@LordSluggo Well, the American military was almost non-existent and as the video stated the country wasn't too supportive or united on the war.
With France no longer able to help the US, like they did during the Revolution, it just seems to me like the Brits could have taken the country again and called all the shots.
“History Doesn't Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes” - Mark Twain. Here the rhyme is engaging in conflicts without understanding local geopolitics/cultures.
I thought this would be a specific battles video. Should you do one, then consider First Savo Island (IJN surface force obliterates an Allied surface force at Guadalcanal), Kasserine Pass (Germans give USA a trial by fire), Chancellorsville (CSA humiliates much larger USA force), and Camden (Horatio Gates tries to be a hero).
See? Celebrating WAR! Come on, Bwana! See Snow on the Equator, Kenya or Ecuador/Peru. War is shit! Make Fuck Not War! Haha!
Haha!
The U.S. has a history of losing or getting a serious bloody nose in every first battle of a war. Bull Run, Ia Drang, Lexington and Concord, Kasserine, Pusan Peninsula...etc
Kasserine Pass.... the Italian Centauro division kicked ass... Forza
@@williamunderwood8303 Are you sure about Lexington and Concord? All the sources say the exact opposite, a resounding American victory.
My favorite summary of the War of 1812 (can't remember who said it): "a war between the U.S. and Great Britain that Canada won."
Who told you it was a defeat?😂 The arms industries made fortune unlike ever seen! 🌎💘💰
Bingo! The geopolitical goals for every military conflict were not the primary goal. They were simply the pretext for feeding psychopaths within the military industrial complex.
A military victory would have simply been the cherry on top.
Everybody's heard about Midway, but most people have never heard off the Battle of Savo Island a couple of month later. An American and allied disaster, four cruisers sunk and the Japanese got away with only light damage.
Midway was pivotal. The Japanese lost the Kido Butai. It ended there ability to effectively attack Hawaii or to credibly threaten anything further East. The Japanese lost carriers and irreplacable highly trained carrier pilots. You are comparing that to the US losing 4 cruisers? How long would it take the US to replace 4 crusiers and their crews in 1942? 3 months?
That was a battle and part of the greater pacific front. America lost battles, but not conventional wars. We lost Afghanistan because there was not clear objective and the same with vietnam
Canadians (then British subjects) wanted revenge after the burning of York, now called Toronto. Which wasn't of any real strategic advantage compared to Kingston. Just over a year later DC was burned. Very cool history along the St. Lawrence with the old forts and turrets. Unfortunately the site of the battle of Crysler Farm is underwater due to the flooding of the St. Lawrence Seaway (WHICH NEEDS A MEGAPROJECTS VIDEO PLEASE!) There is a monument near Morrisburg Ontario of this battle.
I'm Canadian Canada did not burn the Whitehouse it was British opperation there may have been a few Canadianz serving but most of the Troops were Peninsular War Veterans
Indeed there is information about the exact regiments that took part in the burning of Washington, but it was definitely a British operation.
I did not write that Canadians burnt it down. Revenge can be taken in many ways, such as protecting the homefront.
@@Mike-hu3pp To all the Canadians out there. Can we all agree that we sometimes a havva little bittov an insecurity problem and can getta little touchy sometimes about our history ( so do they ) . We know what we've done and don't need attaboys from anyone !
You are still our subjects!!! Now KNEEL!!!!!!!
The big question about Afghanistan is: How long will it take the Taliban to defeat Afghanistan? The "unconquerable nation" (historically proving very difficult for conquerors from Alexander the Great to the Soviet Union) seems to be on the verge of self-conquest... and the question becomes: what will happen then? Seems like a good Warographics episode... and maybe it's already been done. Simon makes so many videos I've lost track of them all.
Allow me to say, as an American, my nation has perfected the art of showing up at other countries' doorsteps and raining utter destruction upon them with unmatched rapidity, precision, and effectiveness. We are shockingly good at breaking things in very short order. That is not, however, the same as always achieving our objectives. In Afghanistan, for instance, the USA collapsed a sitting government into a struggling insurgency in about a month. It could not, however, break that insurgency in 20 years, and the government that we left in its wake collapsed in a number of hours of our departure. But give the US military the opportunity to break stuff? Greatest Of All Time.
Tactically, we haven't suffered a significant defeat in the better part of a hundred years. Strategically? We usually get like a C- at best.
Rebuilding a destroyed country is not one of the military's purposes. I don't it's in the job description of any military. That's the diplomats job to figure it out. At most the military stabilizes the chaos it helped create.
You're mental. Afghan body count, less than 3k dead Americans, around 70k Taliban. You need mental assistance.
@@fertilerevitilizer7833 I didn't say that we didn't kill a lot of Taliban. That's part of "break stuff," which I mentioned that we're really good at. No, the problem is that the Taliban took the country back over about a day after we left.
@@fertilerevitilizer7833 Way to completely miss the point there bud
81 US soldiers taking 60 natives with them when they were ambushed by 1000 elite warriors is not a mere “token defense”. That’s a damn good fight when you’ve been totally surprised by a force more than 10x your number.
Not when one side is in a hardened position with superior weapons and artillery.
@@john2g1 yeah its not exactly rorke's drift numbers is it?
152 british vs 4,000 zulu and winning.
It's not about winning or losing, it's about funneling money to defense contractors.
This guy knows!
The MIC always wins.
Absolute power …
MIC would like you to think otherwise.
Forts on the frontier rarely had walls. They were just a collection of buildings. Only the armory had anything resembling fortifications.
Some on the ones on the Bozeman Trail looked very much like the Hollywood style log forts. The fort that Fetterman was stationed at did have the log walls. It was so dangerous that the commander had a standing order, "No one went outside the walls without permission and a gun."
5:27 OOOOOOHHHHH CAAAAAANNNAAAADA! WE STAND ON GAURD FOOOOOORRRRRR THEEEEEEEEEE
OMG 😂😂😂 google is throwing shade at you. WHHHHY did it add the "translate to English" button?
😂😂😂 Guess full Canadian goes a bit too hard for normal English?
As a Canadian I can understand that the way we talk is a bit odd but youtube thinking it is another language is hilarious 😂😂😂
Red Cloud did win and did gain treaty concessions, there is a bit of context. The American Civil War had ended a little more than a year before and the vast majority of resources were still tied up in the Reconstruction. Red Cloud settled on a reservation and did not join Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull in the Lakota War that saw them defeated.
Custer took his revenge at Washita, slaying native women and papooses.
@duncancurtis5108 oh yeah that must explain his death. Kissed to death by women right? Lol.
@CMP-st5wh wtf are you even trying to say?
A wise man knows when to quit :)
Sadly, the stronger you are, the stronger you think you are. The stronger you think you are, the lazier you get. And the lazier you get, the more likely to be surprised you are. Things change and when you have built up standing strength, it can be hard to adjust to that change quickly enough.
True enough, Zogar. I’m reminded of JFK’s peace speech at American University wherein he pointed out the sad irony that the two most powerful nations in the world were in the most danger.
That's why Britian got the classic PP Smack from the colonies XD
Simon's statement that New Englan was reconsidering reunification with Great Britsin is overreach.
Secession was certainty on the table, but submission to Great Britsin never was.
A moderate Hartford Convention, seeking a regional based relationship with the rest of the nation, (via super-majorities in Congress and a weaker president) was proposed as a compromise but lost its vigor and slipped ftom history.
No reunification talk ever made it out of the pub, if that alone didn't get you punched.
I fought in a war and all that's left are T-shirts with my blood type on them. Sounds about right.
Being that the USA tends to walk away from wars without achieving a strategical victory or armistice it is much better to title videos like this as "Conflicts the USA failed to win".
Red Cloud had a 10-12/1 force advantage and 60 60 of his men were killed? I don’t think that’s indicative of tactical brilliance on Red Cloud’s part.
Wow, that didn't take long. There is an inaccurate statement between 0:06 to 0:10 ... The allies would have still won WWII without the involvement of the USA; it would have taken years longer and cost untold millions of more lives, but the Allies were winning against Germany by December 1941.
yep, the axis were being pushed back on all fronts, rapidly losing oil needed to fuel navies, and it would still be almost a year before the first Americans even landed in Britain or Africa.
Prior to Dec 7th, 1941 the American's most valuable contribution was material.
Russia was arguably the main reason why they won. The US had a relatively small role in the war.
@@nas84payne Too far. Remember that without Lend Lease they would have had significantly less equipment. In aircraft alone the U.S. gave the Soviets 18,200 planes. Some some 30% of their air force and up to 40% of their tank forces were Lend Lease.
Red cloud won a battle but not the war.
There's a big difference between tactical and strategic defeats. Tactically, the U.S. hasn't suffered any noteworthy defeats since Pearl Harbor. Strategically, the U.S. has a less than stellar track record. Whether through misguided motives, bad policies or sheer incompetence, the U.S. has often failed to meet broader strategic objectives in modern wars.
The US went to war against Iraq......and the winner was Iran!!! Let that sink in.
The U.S.A didn't win WW2. Allied victory would have been accomplished, although it would have taken longer, without their intervention. It was the Soviet juggernaut that assured the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Lend-lease kept the Soviets afloat.
@@jaybee9269 tell that to the defender of f Stalingrad and the final push by Zhukov. Also the Soviets paid the highest price in driving the Nazis back and gabbing more land than the Allies (getting beyond Berlin )
@@faheemwyne5098Jay isn't completely wrong though.
Eh, the us saved the Soviets, they would have in the very least starved to death without American food. Good try though Vlad
@@faheemwyne5098 >> I’m well-aware that the Soviets defeated the bulk of Hitler’s land forces. The Red Army was one of the last armies of grapists.
Another description I once heard on the War of 1812, 'was that neither the US, the UK, or Canada won the war but the Indigenous people of the Americas most certainly lost it.' The UK abandoned their indigenous allies and some like Tecumseh, who's confederacy could have been a potentially serious threat to the US, hadn't died in battle in 1813. Would certainly be interesting to see how Tecumseh might have altered peace negotiations or helped convince the British to ensure a large amount of his confederacy remained in tact following the war.
how about the failure of not going to baghdad in 91? i was there and i'm still pissed.
That was a wise decision. If you were there, then you would have been there a hell of a lot longer.
And then what?
Sound more like snatching defeat out of the hands of victory.
Also Bush only had UN backing to kick Saddam out of Kuwait and US would be on its own if UN was smart enough to not get dragged in.
Whoever wrote this did a great job being impartial and direct Simon.
The only failure in Afghanistan is that once they’d won, they tried nation building which was pointless and impossible. Should’ve won, and then said bye figure it out now.
You lost.
But was that the win? Or the win ws "neutralizing" a hostile power and ensuring a friendlier regime was put in place?
@@heraldomedrano1417 The Taliban surrendered
I love this guys content. But why tf does he have so many channels?
It's not solely HIS channels. He's only part a whole team behind all of them.
He's the narrator. He has said himself that there are times when he just reads, and doesn't really register what he's reading. He has a whole team of writers that do the research and send him the scripts, another team that does the video editing, and more people to take care of advertising and all the other myriad details.
Only 5? This list could have been a lot longer.
We're just looking at the worst ones dude
AND!!!???.....@@jimmyyorkshire4495
@@jimmyyorkshire4495 best. I think you meant to say Simon is only talking about the best ones.
two of them aren't military failures on the US side. it took two years for Vietnam to fail after the US left, and Afghanistan just gave up when the US left
@@mbpaintballa Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq weren't even military defeats, they were political. The US military was never defeated by force of arms.
America's military wouldn't have lost in Vietnam, Iraq, nor Afghanistan if the politicians would have gotten out of the way.
Amaricas military wouldn't of been in Vietnam, Iraq nor Afghanistan if the politicians would have not put them there in the first place!
@@cambs0181 this is also very true. Politics starts wars, sends soldiers off to fight, all while telling them 'you can't use this weapon, you can't fight that way, there are rules '
But lost their souls in the process.
_When it comes to real life warfare -- nobody ever wins._
What good is "winning" if the price your people had to pay was the destruction of the very things they were fighting to protect?
Past Korea, you could argue that most if not all of US wars have been those of global intervention and geopolitical oportunism. In other words, with very little "defense" justification.
And at least for Vietnam, without the draft manpower to sustain the war effort would probably have been insufficient very quickly. But for all 3 cases, really poorly conceived in retrospect. No cohesive vision and effort to something that could be called a "win".
As a US veteran I find it interesting that this lists ruffled the feathers of so many suddenly "proud and patriotic" fellow citizens because I don't remember seeing any of you besides me on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln those 4 1/2 years I served onboard her,..or in Bagram, or Kandahar, or Zamboanga when the GWOT made it's way to the PI.
In America,..in the 1980's we were so butt hurt about the loss in Vietnam and its complex ramifications that we had both Sylvester Stallone AND Chuck Norris "re-fight" those conflicts for us in Hollywood,.LoL!
Also,..I was taught in High School that Vietnam was a quagmire and a military defeat and also that the Korean War was really a stalemate,.with am Armistice being signed to stop combat operations and create a line along the 38th parallel which essentially divided along the same geographic lines as it had been before the start of the conflict.
Every great military force in history has experienced failure.
Alexander the Great, Hannibal Barca, Ancient Rome,.Napolean,.etc etc etc,..
America doesn't need to be militarily undefeated to be "The Greatest country in the World",..it simply has to live up to its highest ideas.
...You ran entire battleship by yourself? That's a bold claim lol
High School taught you wrong then...
I'm more annoyed at the bs about us losing 1812 (we didn't. The only objective not achieved in that war by the US was a side quest to annex Canada. That's a win by most standards.). That and Iraq. Considering we beat Saddam and Iraq is functioning (and allows America to hang out for anti-terror operations) how the hell did we lose that again? Your highschool teacher was frankly an idiot if he told you that nam was a military defeat, because militarily America didn't lose, S. Vietnam did 2 years after we left. Should we have been there? No. I'll give your teacher credit for the quagmire part (a quagmire caused by the French failing to keep communism out of 'nam).
And what exactly makes you think those people aren't veterans?
Just because they don't like to brag about it to random people on TH-cam for internet points?
@mjames7674 He is just making shit up.A man who talks like that,as if an entire MILITARY wasn't holding his dumb ass up,has clearly never spent a minute in the service.He likely struggles to get his pants on in the morning lol
Simon, please note that the city of Bladensburg, MD is pronounced with a long "a" (as in change). I worked there for several years.
Dear person,no one gives a shit lol
You know who's never lost a war? The arms dealers.
Yup... And the bankers too.
There is that.
Having done 2 tours in Iraq. I hated being there, but I hated leaving the people to be stuck with worse.
Like him or not Saddam Hussein had developed Iraq into a modern state with a good economy, excellent education, healthcare, infrastructure, etc.
All America does is destroy. Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, etc.
@@feargal2433I don't know about that one.
@@feargal2433in his spare time Saddam was using Mustard Gas on his own people. The more you know!😊
@@erikdarling1 he used it to the rebels of his people
now america replaced saddam with 50 more saddams
Failed on tackling diabetes too 😂
🍔 🥤 🍟
War on Drugs.
Education
😂😂😂😂😂😂
Oh the comments gonna get spicy!
For the vietnam colunfict it should be 58000 dead, physically wounded 150000,physiological screwed up unknown ptsd etc,my step grandmother and I can see the ptsd my grandad suffers from,and that not including the health concerns hes had due to agent orange,and being call baby killer etc when he came home
Not to forget the Aussie dead, New Zealanders and South Koreans.
Also, there was a tremendous amount of drug addiction stemming from that war. The North sent a steady supply of Heroin and opium to military bases through locals making a buck.
"Freed itself from colonial bondage." The American revolutionaries WERE the colonists!
As an American, I can say that the only thing defeating me is indeed my own government. 😢😂
crappy system, perhaps you should have stayed with Britain
It's pretty simple you can't really defeat unless you pound it to rumble and control everything. Cant halfway due it.
We can win a war against anyone. What comes after that, not always so easy. I think if we've learned any lesson, it's that it's hard to change the world for the better at the barrel of a rifle. Maybe those resources we spend on wars could be better used on improving food security, access to clean water, etc
I appreciate your use of language to describe the more nuanced aspects of the Native Americans here. Your writers do you justice.
I am a proud American and it pains me to watch this but it is true lol😅
the truth hurts often enough.
Why?
Why would any of this cause you "pain"?
Are you embarrassed ?
I served 20 years in the USN,.including a handful of short deployments to Bagram and Kandahar. NO pain,.no shame,.no regrets,.it is what it is,..LoL
Even Ancient Rome,..which is arguably the MOSt successful military power in history suffered some horrible defeats ( Hannibal )!!
Also,..Alexander the Great and Napoleon had their sobering moments on the battlefield.
Should still be proud. I'm Scottish & you guys abolished slavery.
@@YaePublishing thats simply overlooks the fact that there was slavery in the first place and people of color were still treated badly after they were "freed"
@@terryshrkyeah even great generals have suffered defeats like Hannibal or Napoleon.
simon - we need more engagement.
writers - how about we talk about the USA's L's.
simon - we don't need any more engagement.
What the fuck is L's? Maybe stay off the crack lol
When u can't sleep and catch Simon upload 22 sec at 4am
If we're looking at the objectives countries had while entering war, Brittain lost WW2, as their main objectives were not met; Poland's position wasn't restored and Britain didn't maintain it's position as a world power
The objective was to stop Germany and Japan from taking over the world. Objective was met.
I think most historians would agree with you that Britain's victories in WW1 and WW2 were Pyhrric victories if anything. They survived the war and defeated Germany, but they lost their position as a military superpower.
Britain entered WW1 to kick Germany out of Belgium.
Britain entered WW2 to kick Germany out of Poland.
both of those objectives were achieved when the wars ended.
@@ktvindicare pretty sure the word Pyrrhic doesn't apply here.
but Britain was already moving towards dismantling its empire before WW1, Australia and Canada had already been given independence to govern themselves, and both along with new Zealand and south Africa would become dominions, and India was already in talks before WW2 to do the same.
frankly what people see with the commonwealth is what Britain was already heading towards voluntarily anyway, so the world wars speeding that up isn't much of a loss.
also Britain built the empire with the military its still has, the world wars are basically the only time empire troops were used outside of their own countries.
@@bigenglishmonkeyI’m pretty sure it was the soviets not British who “liberated” Poland.
ISIS and other terrorist groups didn't simply arise after the US withdrew from Iraq. The US occupation, easily our most disastrous foreign undertaking in modern history, was based on entirely false assumptions, lack of any contingency, and unprecedented, unchecked activities by private military contractors. It can be argued the nascent insurgency in a nation that under Hussein's tortuous fist had no possibility for such activity, was kicked into a full blast by the gruesome 2004 attack on Blackwater as it escorted a catering convoy through Fallujah. Every action taken by the Coalition Provisional Authority poured more fuel on the fire, especially de-Baathification It was at this time the first iteration was what became ISIS formed out of the remnants of al Qaeda in Iraq. Placed in hibernation by the surge, it sprung back to life soon after US withdrawal, adopting ISIS in 2013.
I see you’ve watched MSNBC and a few documentaries.
@nwj03a if you're implying my statement is inaccurate, please let me know what comparable events I missed. As I strive to get information from the most accurate sources, MSNBC isn't one of them.
De-Baathification was a terrible mistake. The Ba'athists were some of the people most likely to oppose extremism, if they had a place at the table, but they ended up completely excluded from society, which left them angry and with nothing to lose. A significant section of the population, many educated or ex-soldiers, they had no reason to support the new Iraq and every reason to help those who wanted to take it down.
War of 1812 was the last time we had to shoot at each other =victory? You make the call. I'd call stalemate
I think many Americans would dispute the conclusions of this video, but you have to look at the eventual outcome of these conflicts; Vietnam becomes a unified communist country, Afghanistan returns to Taliban control, and Iraq becomes a chaotic, shambolic version of democracy, no you weren't militarily defeated as such, but the truth is you would still need to be fighting in these conflicts now to avoid the outcomes!!! We British were the same when you kicked us out, we hardly lost a battle but after Yorktown decided to give up, we could have struggled on for years but I think you have to accept at some point that some wars are unwinnable.
Were they failures based on the stated/alleged goals?
Absolutely.
Were they defeats for the U.S. military?
Vietnam, you could argue either way. Afghanistan and Iraq were not.
Maybe English isn't your first language, what you listed is POLITICAL defeats, not military ones. You didn't mention body counts, which averaged 12:1.
@@Welverinyou could not argue that for Vietnam 🤦 you have access to infinite information at your fingertips is a minute of research really that hard?? In Vietnam the US lost 50k, soldiers, north Vietnam and viet Cong lost over 2 MILLION. To compare the two is mental delusion.
@@Welverin"Vietnam you could argue either way" 50k US deaths vs over 2 MILLION north Vietnamese military deaths. Not comparable 🤦🤦🤦🤦
@@fertilerevitilizer7833 oh right, so I presume u r referring to body counts in Vietnam, which were totally reliable and accurate!! And yes English is very much my first language, tbh I don't what language is or what point ur actually making but can only assume ur a Trump supporter!!!
Love this
In other words, politicians from both sides of the aisle got their grubby hands in each of these matters and sent our boys to their doom (their own sons never reaching the front lines). Too many military commanders have had political aspirations and/or ties to the Military Industrial Complex to seek their fortunes. Our military members can hold their heads high, though. May God bless them all.
I watched Ken Burns documentary on Vietnam. Found it interesting that the N.V.s rich kids and connected parents' kids were sent to college in the Soviet Union and China and not to the war. Once again, Rich Man's war, poor man's fight."
100% agreed mate👍
Can you do a video on Maharaja Ranjit Singh? I would recommend for you to look into his story. He came from nothing and then lead his army from the age where of around 12, and then became the king of the Sikh empire. An unbelievable story
didn't know any of that stuff about the war of 1812 the part about the US wanting to annex canada and some states seriously thinking of seceding was a surprise also had forgotten that the congress cut-off of military aid to south vietnam was a major factor in the south's sudden collapse and defeat⚛😀
Watch College Humori's take on it. Hilarious !
While the US was still pulling out of Nam it was still pouring in millions in military aide, on top of what they already had.
Materially speaking the South had plenty to defend itself.
Just like Afghanistan later, a lot of it went to corrupt officials. We paid for S.V. troops that gave a kick back to their officers and never showed up, except for pay day or they didn't exist at all. The same thing would happen in Afghanistan.
A lot of the officials that were put into power by the US were the same ones the Taliban had over thrown due to their corruption.
thanks of course that is right the thieu regime was incredibly corrupt seem to recall he fled the country with a planeload of gold bars@@zephyer-gp1ju ⚛😀
The thing is that's it's never the soldiers fault. The problems "lies" in Washington.
I knew this video was gonna have so many issues on it.
War of 1812: Wrong, the US was not trying to annex British North America. This is stated in the President's declaration of War against Britain as well as proven in evidence in 2 prior votes in the lead up to the war by the US Senate and House of Representatives on what the US would do if they ever gained position of British North America. In both cases the people who wanted to annex British North America didn't even have the votes to get their argument onto the floor to argue that the US should annex the land if it ever gained control of it. So, yes, there were people in the US who wanted control of what would become Canada. But the overwhelming majority of US lawmakers and citizens did not want the people living in British North America to become citizens of the US. And this is because of the large Catholic population in British North America. The US, at that time still had very few Catholics living within the country and they had the same opinion of Catholics that the majority of British people did. Which to keep it YT safe, was they VERY much did not like them (and I am a Catholic). The US hate/dislike of Catholics would start to dissipate in the 1840's forward as Irish Catholics started to immigrate to the US in large numbers.
The US's primary goal in the war of 1812 was to get the UK to stop supporting the Native American's in their effort to create a new Indian nation in US territory around Michigan. The second US goal was to stop British impressment of US sailors. Which while the British didn't agree to that in the peace deal they did never enact such actions again. So the US completed their goals in the war of 1812, the US got things out of the war, the British didn't. The reason the US invaded British North American territory was to capture it and use it as a bargaining chip with the British to end the war and get what the US wanted in the war quickly.
Vietnam War: A much better argument than the War of 1812. But still for the Vietnam war it is easy to argue the US WON the war. There is a 2 and half year gap between when the US made peace till when N Vietnam attacked again. During those 2 and half years the US had gained everything they wanted in the peace deal that ended the "American War" as it is called in Vietnam. The US kept South Vietnam as a capitalist democracy and stopped the spread of communism in South East Asia. That is what the US wanted and why the US entered into the fighting in Vietnam. When the war started up again 2 and half years after peace was made that was a separate war that the US was not a party to. Should the US of intervened in the war and helped South Vietnam per the terms of the Paris Peace Accord? Yes. But not getting involved in a war your ally losses doesn't mean the US lost that war. People try to set Vietnam up as one giant war from 1945 until 1978 when in reality it is many different wars. Some that the communist Vietnamese won and some that they lost. In the end the communist's did win and complete all of their goals. It took all of those wars to gain their independence as a united nation and then their wars with China to remain an independent nation. I'd argue (and history is on my side now with this) that they would have been much better off to have wanted to unite more under the Democratic/capitalist South Vietnam. What Simon said within the video on what happened to South Vietnam after the US left was correct though. Ford did want the US to defend our ally and the Democrats refused his want to send military supplies to South Vietnam. But that doesn't mean the US lost the physical war. That war ended with a technical US "victory". Of course the end result of what happened later made the war a loss for the US. And what the US put into the war didn't at all justify what the US got out of the war. Even if the US was able to secure a democratic/Capitalist Vietnam for half or even ALL of Vietnam, the cost the US had to spend on their freedom was not worth it for the people of the US. But that is something the US does. But that is just something the US does. The US wants to spread freedom(democracy) around the world and when the US sees people fighting for that they want to try to help those people. It is a noble and undercredited aspect of the United States. If the US wanted to the US could isolate itself from the rest of the world and the US could be fine forever. But since WW2 the US has decided it is going to try to help the world and spread freedom to people around the world. Should the US stop that and let Ukraine for example die? Just let Russia take what they want and force them to live under the government Russia picks for them because they are stronger? Should the US let China take Taiwan and take the freedom the people of Taiwan have away? Should the US let the Taliban take all rights away from the women of their nation?
Afghanistan War: The war completed it's primary goal which was to destroy Al Qaeda. The US didn't care that the Taliban was in control of Afghanistan until they refused to hand over Al Qaeda (better to say, the US didn't care that the Taliban was in control to the point they wanted to get involved in that nation). That lead to the US trying to make Afghanistan a democracy after the military invasion was completed. The military goals were completed. As stated above under the Vietnam war argument, the US wanted to make Afghanistan a democracy so that all the people (particularly the women) had if not equal rights, at least some rights. It was a good and noble thing for the US AND the other NATO nations to have fought for. But at some point you have to look at things at the cost it is putting on the US. If the US spends all it's resources fighting for the rights of one nation that limits what the US can do in the future. It had to at some point come down to what the people of Afghanistan wanted. Not enough of them were willing to fight for the rights of their women. There is a large amount of their population that don't care about equal rights (especially for their women). So let them live how they want. It should sicken everyone the way they treat women within that country still to this day. But that can't be the focus of the US to the point that it weakens the US in potential wars against near pier adversaries. So long as the Taliban don't make Afghanistan a sanctuary for terrorists again the US, NATO and other Western thinking nations should just let those people live under the rule of medieval barbarians who treat women as property. They have to care about how they are living more then the West does.
Iraq War: So easy to counter. Iraq is still a democracy under the government the US setup for them after the US military and allies easily toppled Saddam's evil government. The goal of that war, to remove Saddam from power, was completed and done easily so. The reason's why the war started and if it was the correct decision to make to invade is another argument entirely. But it is 100% FALSE that the US didn't find WMD's in Iraq. This is the most non-covered story in modern world history. The US government under Obama admitted that the US government had found THOUSANDS of chemical weapons that Saddam was hiding and many US soldiers and Iraqi workers were even injured from them while moving them and destroying them. The reason the US didn't admit this right from the start was because the design of those chemical weapons was American made, the designs given to Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war by the CIA. This isn't some secret story hidden on the CIA website either. This is a story that was covered by every major newspaper and website in the world in 2014. From the NY Times, Wash Post, Fox News, Yahoo, Al Jazeera, you name it and they covered it. Just Google "chemical weapons were found in iraq" and pick the article you want to read about it. We went for years saying nothing was found in Iraq that everyone still believes that despite it being so easily countered. Lastly, ISIS being formed in Iraq after the US left doesn't make the Iraq war a loss or a failure. The US was just invited back to Iraq after Obama pulled the troops out and the US and other allies went and helped the new Iraqi democratic government fight ISIS and sustain themselves so that some nutty terrorist nation was not created in the gap territory between Syria and Iraq.
I've talked to you about this before in other YT threads lol.
You are again 100% correct in regards to the Vietnam war.
As someone originally from Vietnam I can confirm that we are not taught the American war and the Unification war are the samething.
The war between just North Vietnam and just South Vietnam is considered a separate war and the last war to uniting Vietnam under independence. As you, said, we then had to defend that independance against China in 2 seperate wars after that.
As an Italian I do think you are correct about the US not getting the credit it deserves for essentially being the nation brave enough to defend freedom around the world. Before the US got involved in world affairs the world was getting more and more violent as time went on until WW2.
After that, the US stayed involved in world affairs and has brought about by far the most peaceful and prosperous time in human history.
Actually the 1812 war had nothing to do with the British stopping taking American sailors prisoner and was never once talked about in the peace negotiations.
What stopped it, in fact, was the British finishing off it's war with France so they had no reason to take anyone prisoner from then on.
Furthermore the Americans destroyed the Indians, and with them gone, no need for the British to help them which again is why this was not discussed in any peace negotiations.
So by your logic, America started a war to fight things that solved themselves, great success!!
@@MrSniperfox29 What? The War of 1812 "had nothing to do with British forcing US sailor's into the British Navy"? That is either one of the most unhistorical replies I have ever heard on TH-cam and that is saying something for this site's comment section or you misworded that reply terribly. As far as peace negotiations go, I said within my comment that the US didn't get it in writing that the British would stop action impressment. As I said that was because the US didn't have as much of a upper hand in the negotiations as they wanted to. Had the US taken British North America it would have been an easy addition to the peace deal in return for the territory as was the initial plan at the start of the war. Either way though the British stopped the practice after the War of 1812 because they rightly agreed that the practice was not worth the cost of another war with the US. A war which the greatest army leader in British history, the Duke of Wellington guaranteed would result in the fall of British North America. He made it clear to the King, Regency and Parliament that if another war wit the US began after that peace deal that the British would not be able to hold onto their remaining territory in North America. The US military had gotten stronger by that point and Britain couldn't station and supply enough troops to defend such a massive territory right in the US's backyard to say. The US had no desire to annex that territory though as it was made up of a large Catholic population and the British never gave the US reason to want to go to war with them again after the war of 1812. The dispute of where the border lies in the Pacific North West was the closest things ever came to a 3rd US-British war and that dispute was decided peacefully as neither side was looking for a war at that point in time.
And the war was a success from the US point of view. It first off of course destroyed the Indian confederacy which the British were greatly supporting in order to try to make a 3rd nation between the US and British territory that they could use to play off the US. If the British really wanted to give the Native Americans a nation of their own they could have done that within the massive territory they held in British North America. They weren't doing their actions out of pity or want to make an Indian nation. They were doing to to damage the power of the US. Second, the US had no way to way when the Napoleonic wars were going to end and when the British were going to stop stealing US citizens to served in their navy. The Wars between France, Britain and th erest of Europe by that point had been going on for almost 20 years. This was a complaint the US had had on the British for many years by that point but the British actions in support of Tecumseh and his Indian confederacy put things beyond the line and caused the US declaration of war.
The war is what stopped these British actions. It showed the world that the US couldn't just be messed with and would take insults and damage to the nation from European powers. Britain would not have taken say Sweden or Spain stealing their sailors from ships and forcing them to fight for the British navy. Britain would also not and didn't accept France trying to make Scotland an independent nation again. The BRitish would also not accept say Russia funding and influencing a rebellion to create a new nation within modern Pakistan or India. The war was fully justified and completed the goals for which it was started and most importantly it showed the world that the US was not just going to be some "sort of" nation on the other side of the world that had no real power and wouldn't be willing to fight for it's rights or be insulted/taken advantage of in ways that no European nation would ever accept.
@@PhillyPhanVinnySorry not interested in your babble yankie rascal, toodles now
Very interesting.
...Nobody tell them that we specifically held back and didn't actually use wartime tactics against Taliban. Nobody remind them that civilians are just as much targets as the soldiers are, in a proper war. After all, how many civilians died in the London Blitz? How many died in the Battle of Berlin? How many died in the Siege of Japan? ...Yeah. As much as people want to call these "wars", they're not. They're peacekeeping missions.
Oh yeah, peacekeeping missions. 😅😂🤣
@@feargal2433 ...You think we couldn't have turned those countries into glass floors if we wanted to? We haven't be in an actual war since the 40s. If we wanted these people gone, there would be nothing anybody in the world could have done to stop us.
I swear, ain't nobody aware of how a real war is fought, anymore. Too busy guzzling down information fed to them by the uninformed and unaware.
10:23 - Afghanistan and the
13:02 "War on Terror" 🙄
Jeremy Clarkson : If only America could win its wars so convincingly....
Damn you Jeremy!
He's still my favorite brit. And always will be
Lakota Indian sovereignty over the Powder River country endured for eight years until renewed US interest in Great Sioux Reservation land due to the discovery of gold in the Black Hills, leading to the Great Sioux War of 1876 and violations of the treaty. In a 1980 Supreme Court case, United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, the court ruled that tribal lands covered under the treaty had been by the US government, and the tribe was owed compensation plus interest. As of 2018 this amounted to more than $1 billion.
Fetterman, Grattan, and Custer are three names in the United States that are synonymous with military stupidity (though Fetterman might be the exception, as new evidence shows his superior, Colonel Chapman, was the one responsible for the Fetterman Fight). Grattan's decision to launch an attack in the midst of negotiations with 20 men and 2 cannons against a camp of hundreds of Cheyenne was utter folly and everyone knows about how Custer led a 215-man battalion to their deaths.
The Australian military, of which I was a member, has been involved in a number of US conflicts since WWII. In the role of an auxiliary force used in a Ranger capacity when attached, and with largely autonomous TAORs when detached.
Our TAORs, primarily Phuoc Tuy in Vietnam, and Oruzgan in Afghanistan, were pacified very quickly. The main reason being extensive experience in counterinsurgency. Something that before Vietnam the US had never done. And failed to learn from Vietnam. The big unit, conventional war mentality. Which doesn't work with counterinsurgency. British/Australian/New Zealand forces successfully defeated the insurgencies in Malaya and Borneo in short order. Adoption of our tactics in Vietnam certainly would have given a different face to the war.
Don't get me wrong. I am not deriding the US forces. I have trained a lot with them and have been deployed with them. Their urban warfare especially was second to none. Green role not so much. An absolute pleasure to train and deploy with (especially the Marines). Tactically and strategically the US brass have been arse-about-face in most of the conflicts since WWII. In Vietnam especially there was practically no strategy. You cannot win a conflict without a comprehensive, clear strategy with associated indicators of success.
Throw in the fact the the civilian populaces in Western and Anglo-spheric countries are largely spineless (with many subversive elements), and there is no way to win. Especially with televised conflict. If the bombing of Dresden and firebombing of Japan had been televised in WWII as per Vietnam, no doubt many civilians on our side would have turned against the war- losing it at home as was the case with Vietnam onwards. Politicians in democracy want votes. Fighting wars that the populace has lost the spine for is not a vote-winner.
Not to mention that it is the Military Industrial Complex/Deep State that runs our countries (especially the US). They care about profit. Not winning wars. They want their weapons tested, upgraded, and a killing made off of their manufacture and sale. As an ex-soldier it pains me to say it- WWI onwards were manufactured. For profit. Those who Served deserve and should receive the utmost respect. It isn't their fault that their patriotism was used to fill the pockets of corporations.
It is their fault for being weak enough to fall to patriotism in the first place "those who serve" deserve only contempt.
16:18 You’ve got to be kidding me. They used the Star Trek: Voyager font?!?!?!
Another empire. And all empires fail.
America is a dream, an ideal, not an empire. Empires invade, conquer, and subjugate. That's not what we've done for a very long time. We did not subjugate Japan, or Mexico, or North and South Korea, or any other nation we've been in conflict with. We also do not steal resources contrary to what meme logic tells you. Look up the numbers.
@@Justin_Ebright You don't understand what empire means. American imperialism pervades the world.
@@WaddedBliss I understand perfectly and disagree thoroughly. Just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't mean they don't understand perfectly well. The world law matters, that's what pervades the world. Our commitment to ourselves and our allies is a deterrent not oppression.
Only the wrong sort would feel oppressed by not being able to invade the free world. The world rules the world. The international agreements are international.
Maritime law and borders are internationally approved and should be internationally protected. It shouldn't always be America while everyone else stands around shouting "i said no, stop. If you don't stop I say no again". World order takes the world to uphold.
You a Putin fan or something?
@@WaddedBliss Yeah we sell people culture and you're entirely welcome to stop buying it. Any time now. I'm sure you'll get tired of our films and music and clothes one day...
There's your 'empire'. You can strike us for Hawaii. You can strike us for stealing half of Mexico back in the 1840s. But we don't expand anymore. In fact we're probably the prime signatory in the modern status quo of 'no one should be expanding anymore'. If being a merchant 'empire' is us being naughty and you don't like it? We also sell real fucking tiny violins.
@@Justin_Ebright What's meme logic?
Dude how many channels do you have
Great vid. I was thinking that maybe you could do something on englands 4 centuries of failures, and how they have been thrown off of every continent on the planet. Maybe you could even do something about the inbreeds. You being a brit...
you spelt, my country was no longer needed so Britain left us laying in our own filth and im still salty, wrong
Another great video, Simon. Do you enjoy the comments by all the armchair warriors as much as I do? You know, the ones which the closest they've come to being in the military is watching an ad to join up?
Just so everyone knows, the American military and the NATO allies that went with us are not responsible for losing the Afghan war. American diplomats are, they dropped the baton in ending the war on our terms. The NATO military was largely withdrawn from major conflicts and battles. If anything, the place was a giant testing ground for the practical applications of weapons, surveillance equipment, and strategies against guerrilla fighters.
President Biden and his administration had the greatest diplomatic "high ground" anyone was ever going to get coming in to the Afghanistan situation. He could either enforce the Taliban's side of the agreement the Trump administration originally negotiated or cite the current non compliance of the Taliban to oust Al Qaeda from their territory as reason to scrap it and create his own diplomacy and take credit for ending a war started by 9/11.
Instead he gave in to what the Taliban wanted by pulling out without anything in return and did so with many of our units not even doing a proper turnover or notice with Afghan forces. That left Afghan forces blind and allowed the Taliban and Al Qaeda to quickly takeover. If you ever wanted to know what "Drop everything and GTFO" looks like for the military, the Afghanistan pull out was a textbook definition.
Not to mention the fact that President Biden lied to everyone and even got the Afghanistan President to lie that there was no concern that the country would fall back into terrorist hands.
And before anyone chimes in that it's the Afghanistan citizens problem to fight back, let me remind you that the population was heavily subjugated through fear of execution. That mentality to not fight back against the Taliban has been ingrained in them for generations and standing against them is a foreign concept. It was always going to take a couple generations to undo that indoctrination and teach regular citizens they do not have to be afraid and to fend for themselves against Al Qaeda and Taliban oppression. That's on top of shaping the discipline into their security forces.
So now, instead of finishing the job it is only a matter of time before another 9/11 happens. It does not have to be the USA either. It can be any NATO member that invokes article 5 and we are obligated to answer that call.
Losing useless battles whilst still being the one and only modern day superpower with Vlad scowling in the background of course 😂😂
It's no longer a story that the world is experiencing a global economic downturn, I'm so happy that I've been receiving $64,000 from my $15,000 investment every 14 days.
HOW !! I know it's possible , I would appreciate if you show me how to go about it .
The crypto market is highly profitable with an expert broker just like Janis Claire Morin. I got recommended to her and since then my financial life has been a success
It was a very awesome transformation , No greater joy than seeing my progress in an initial decision ..
just searched about her on Google and yes, she's won my heart. She just gained herself a new client
Oh please , how can someone get to speak with Mrs Janis Claire Morin !! ?, m
As an American I agree with all of your entries.
Both vietnam and Afghanistan didn't fail until after the US left... both those countries were supposed to be able to stand on their own.
Add to this that the US weren’t defeated militarily.
Yea the whole point is the US failed to defeat the Taliban or the North Vietnamese. It doesn't matter what happened in the end those 2 got what they wanted and the US didn't so they FAILED. Let me say it again, they were DEFEATED. Just ask General Mark Milley, even he was brave enough to admit the defeat.
Yup. 100%. Military won the battles, then politicians lost the politicking. Big difference.
To make an omelet, you need to break a few eggs.
US soldiers won about 98% of encounters in Afghanistan. Last couple of years taliban was quietly sitting and waiting. Afghans decided not to fight and lost war in Afghanistan.
In Iraq… US won the war, some years later elected government asked US to go away, and US soldiers packed up and returned back to US…. No, really, how else you expect democratic victory over dictatorship to look like?
Yep. Except we did contribute to the fall of Afghanistan. It was our war after all, not the Afghan security forces. The military was done, politicians and diplomats failed Afghanistan.
Yeah, the Iraq one's a bit of a head scratcher. We didn't lose there. Hell, they still have us around in case they need support with terror groups. If we'd "lost" in Iraq they would have told us to leave completely.
Is there now a democratic government in Afghanistan?
This is not a good metric. Vietnam war casualties: 1-3 million Vietnamese, about 300K from Laos and Cambodia. Vs. about 60K American soldiers. That's about a 50:1 ratio, or the same 2% you cite. Only a fool would claim a USA win there.
In both cases, the regime that fought the invaders outlived the foreign military intervention.
You have to blame politics for Vietnam because the Airmen begged and pleaded to be able to take out the Sam missiles when they started installing them. Yet they were denied permission until there were hundreds of Sam sites and it was too late. The US military did not lose in Vietnam the politicians forced the United States military to lose. The United States politicians forced 58,000 Americans to die in Vietnam because they absolutely refused to allow the United States military to do what it was and still is very capable of and that was and is destroying the enemy.
Bottom line is this: We set up a corrupt puppet government nobody was willing to fight and die for but many were willing to fight and die against
No, go on, keep going.
Given the state of American natives The victory eventually went to the US government, it just took a few more years.
Same with England. They come begging to us like Oliver Twist. Lol
I am assured, by an American who in no way was bitter about being corrected, that they did not lose the war of 1812, in fact they decided to graciously offer Britain peace because they realised the soon to become Canada was not worthy of becoming America and instead they had decided to civilise Mexico instead.
He assured me, with absolutely no profanity or death threats, that in no way were the Americans journey west and south anything but honourable taking of land that nobody else was on, and in no way was it like the Germans going east for living space. In fact, there were zero people in the American west and Mexico, in fact, did not exist at all
He assured me, in the nicest way possible, that America is the best and has, in fact, never lost a war at all.
Yikes.
I've the impression that over time you are speaking faster and faster without taking a breath. Don't really like it but thanks for the video anyway.
With the War of 1812, it’s important to remember that Canada/Britain also failed their goals in the War and that the U.S. burnt down Hampton (which was Canada’s Capital at the time).
So the War of 1812 is seen as a draw because nobody really succeeded at anything in the war
The US was thrown out of Canada. That was the objective and Canada's Capital was York which was re-named Toronto.
@@alan-dx2zf Britains also failed their objective which was to take back the U.S.
@@m.c.martinno it wasn’t. Please share your source for that.
@@lesdodoclips3915 Brittanica
Well, considering the British burned our capital and my hometown Buffalo, I'd say they won. So, I want to know why our national anthem is still a song from that war, terrible to sing or at times hear it sung? Time for us to switch to America The Beautiful for the next century or so. As to Afghanistan, I'd say we just joined a very long line stretching back to Alexander the Great, and say: weren't the British in that same long line? Once or twice, wasn't it Simon? Oops, sorry, I was wrong, it was three times.
How did they win when we got them to stop impressing our sailors which was the original war goal. Also their veteran troops that fought Napoleon got their ass kicked in New Orleans.
Yea no one is saying the British didn't lose, they were absolutely destroyed too. I've found that Americans get more salty when you mention Afghanistan defeat than the Russians or British. Americans entire pride is in their military because of their lack of cultural heritage than other countries like Russia or Britain.
@@fsdfsdfsd4561 I don’t agree with that last statement. America does have cultural heritage though it is very young it is very powerful.
@@iattacku2773 because impressment ended before the war started and it was the US requesting peace talks not Britain.
Vietnam war wasn't just the American war Australia, New Zealand, France and England were also involved but as normal Americans always forget that they weren't the only country involved just like in the first and second world wars and Korea
The British were not involved in the Vietnam War. The Korean war was a UN war, many countries were involved.
How about Pearl Harbour?
Merely a tactical setback in a strategic victory over Japan. there were others in the Pacific theater, but the outcome of the war in that theater was never really in question, once the US decided to remove Japan's presence in anywhere BUT Japan.
@@Operator8282 agreed pearl harbour is only one part of the overall war the US more than made up for in other engagements as an Australian one that is special to my heart is there victory in the battle of the coral sea which forever united the US and Australia
If combined with loss of the Philippines then maybe.
I didn’t know all those failures. Now can we make a 15 minute video about US victories 😅
Using the example of the other wars, Red Cloud lost because they couldn't hold the territory.
Any modern military incursion, engagement or exchange can be in fact labeled as outright failure. A defeat of diplomacy. A breakdown of mutual cultural & geopolitical understanding. & Ultimately-a Loss, that of precious irreplaceable Life. War in & of itself, doesn't just occur, @ it's core-it is the failure of communication that makes a friend become foe.
I agree with all but the last one. Yes it is absolutely true that our pullout led to the creation of ISIS but, militarily speaking, the war was a success. Saddam was overthrown extremely quickly and American forces were able to cripple the Iraqi air defense network in a matter of hours.
With the capitulation of Saddams Government to American military might the war was over.
the whole focal point was wmds and those were never found meanwhile they existed and got used
America lost both wars. Take the L.
@@joshua9490 We won the Iraq War. We only lost the Afghan war because of bad diplomacy of the current administration.
@@bl8danjilyea it's a shame trump signed a treaty with the taliban, what a joke!
What about times when the USA helped or by direct action depose democratically elected governments to be replaced by brutal dictatorships ?
Simon proves he's a yoga teacher. That's quite the stretch with the War in Iraq.
Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam weren't military defeats. This video is kind of bogus
No. They were.
Cope harder.
Cry me a river. Go into the country thinking it will be easy and fooling your stupid population who doesn't know shit about history to also believe that, get defeated, run away in humiliation and then cope.
Agreed. I usually really like Fact Boy’s videos, but this takes 4 political blunders and calls them military defeats, even though militarily they were resounding victories. The other “defeat” was a case of being ambushed by a numerically (and vastly at that) superior foe.
A military defeat is on the battle field. A political defeat is in the office of a politician. These were very definitely the latter.
@@PrimericanIdolAfghanistan was a diplomatic defeat. Iraq was done and we won. Vietnam had the military turning things around, only the politicians decided to pull out. So, cope harder with facts.
@@fsdfsdfsd4561 how about using proper grammer and english before calling anyone stupid.