[fishmicrowaver]

Reminds me of the military. Senior leaders often have no real idea of what is happening on the ground because the information funneled upward doesn't fit into painting a rosy report. The middle officer ranks don't want to know the truth because it impacts their careers. How can executives even hope to lead their organizations this way?

[esafak]

By not relying on direct reports for all their information.

[ndiddy]

Well the US has lost every military conflict it's entered for the past 70 years. Since there's been no internal pressure to change methodology, maybe the US military doesn't view winning as necessary.

[johnnyanmac]

Those past 70 years weren't about winning. It was about making sure the enemies lost more out of it. The US is large and relatively stable and hasn't had to face extended war on its soil since the Civil War 170 years ago. There's no true skin in the game for those who start these wars.

[bergesenha]

Which is a good strategy, but do you think the afghans lost more than 2 trillion dollars?

[hackandthink]

"The war began on April 12, 1861, when the Confederacy bombarded Fort Sumter in South Carolina"

170 years ago is 1855.

[baud147258]

> Well the US has lost every military conflict it's entered for the past 70 years.

Operation Just Cause? Desert Storm?

And, depending on how you look at it, the US won the war in Afghanistan and Irak, but lost the peace afterwards.

[cco]

Those might be the only ones? Desert Storm being the one that I'd probably call out, Just Cause was just so small.

One minor win, every major operation being a loss doesn't change the conclusion though imo.

I think it's also instructive to look at each of these operations and note that the two that were won were small, had clear objectives, and were executed quickly to meet those objectives and had no scope creep.

[phantasmish]

Iraq had one of the largest militaries in the world at the time of Desert Storm. They had tons and tons of arms and equipment and a huge standing army to counter the persistent threat (and/or to provide their own threat) of resumed hostilities with Iran (that war was still pretty recent when Desert Storm took place)

I would agree that the US is notably terrible at occupations and getting involved in civil wars, at least since WWII, but Desert Storm was pretty much an unqualified slam-dunk take-a-victory-lap success against one of the top armies in the world that wasn’t an ally or a nuclear state—carried out on the other side of the planet from the US, to boot. Like I think Iraq was ranked top-10 at the time by many ways of reckoning military strength, and that wasn’t enough to effectively resist the US effort at all, really.

If that war seems small, it’s only possible for it to seem that way from the victor’s perspective, and only because we did such an amazingly good job of totally destroying Iraq’s substantial capacity to fight in a matter of weeks. In terms of deployed and engaged men and materiel it was really big, just fast because it was so very one-sided, and “cheap” in terms of casualties on the US side for the same reason.

[cco]

You're agreeing with me, or rather I agree with you.

I consider Desert Storm an unqualified victory in an engagement that is in the same conversation as a Vietnam or Korean war, but still not quite to a WW level in scope or complexity.