[pksebben]

I served. While in basic training, the drill sergeants taught us why we salute differently than other countries (probably apocryphal) - because we've "never lost a war". I'm cheeky now and I was then, so I asked about vietnam.

"Police Action" came the terse reply. "We don't talk about that one."

Course by then I'd already signed on the dotted, so...

[mattmaroon]

We’ve never lost a war but we’ve definitely failed to accomplish our objectives a few times along the way. We built the greatest hammer the world has ever seen then asked it to saw lumber and wondered why it failed.

[bdangubic]

we may need to look up a definition of “won” in the dictionary cause we didn’t win a war exactly 80 years :)

[mattmaroon]

That’s not true at all. We just don’t talk much about the ones we won.

Last year I went to Grenada, which we invaded in the 80s. They love us for it and have statues of Reagan on the island. Without us, they probably would have suffered the same fate as Cuba.

Where would South Korea be without our intervention? Etc.

[bdangubic]

TIL that we won the Korean War and also a Grenada War :)

learning something new every day…

[mattmaroon]

Well, goes back to your definitions of “won” and “war”. Both are fairly blurry.

We definitely accomplished our objective in Grenada, which we invaded. I’d call it winning a war. There were boots on the ground who did what we sent them to do.

Korea was definitely a war and the ostensible purpose was to repel North Korea, which we and our allies did. If that’s not winning a war, what is it?

[the_af]

Curious here, what's the different salute?

[pksebben]

palm-down. If you've ever seen the brits salute, it's palm-forward.