When the US wins, it tends to be quick, clean, and easily forgotten. Consider our victories against ISIS, or against Saddam in the Gulf War. Both cases where an expansionist power violated territorial integrity norms by engaging in conquest, and was defeated by a US-led coalition.
> against Saddam in the Gulf War
I really hope you're referring to GW1, rather than 2. And yeah, if you weren't a Kurd who believed GW Bush, then that was a pretty effective war from the US (and global) perspective.
We won in Iraq 2 as well, and considering the fight against conventional Iraqi forces, they were quickly defeated.
> We won in Iraq 2 as well,
Only if you ignore the rise of ISIS and various militias, along with the collapse of Iraqi society (mind you, the sanctions had done a pretty good job of wrecking that before GW2 anyway).
>the rise of ISIS and various militias
Where is ISIS now?
>the collapse of Iraqi society
Iraq's human development index is currently higher than it's ever been. It has a fairly typical human development index for its region. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-development-index?t...
You guys will define "winning" so narrowly that if the Middle East continues to be volatile, that means the US must've lost. The type of victory that the US achieved in WW2 is an atypically high standard for "victory".
> You guys will define "winning" so narrowly that if the Middle East continues to be volatile, that means the US must've lost. The type of victory that the US achieved in WW2 is an atypically high standard for "victory".
Sorry what, I wasn't aware that I was a member of you guys.
Look, the US invaded Iraq in GW2, they killed off Saddam very quickly, but taking control of the country and settling down all of the violence took well over a decade, and dealing with ISIS took much the same amount of time.
You can regard that as a victory, but it sure doesn't look like much of one to me, particularly as Saddam (for all his faults) suppressed the militias like ISIS who ended up becoming a major concern for the US.
In a world where the US had never invaded Iraq, do you think the region would look much different today?