Why does the US continue to lose wars?

Often times, we get into wars with people that just don't want to toe the line. North Koreans/Red Chinese, Vietnamese, Iraqis, Afghans. The list goes on. These are all cultural groups with long standing pride in who they are. The way they say it, its not us who will submit them, it is them who will submit us. Who's civilization has been longer on the planet, the US, or the Arabs? They will sooner all fight to the last man than accept change. I will say this is both a strength and weakness with them.

Also, again very typically, there's a sort of condescending attitude that takes place. After said cultures are whooped by the US, we excel at winning battles, and we are probably the best at this since the Roman Legionnaires- we come in with this out of touch method of securing peace. 'We are here to help you fight the bad guys', this was absolute nonsense every where we tried it. Perhaps, like in Vietnam and Afghanistan, where we are basically drawn into one side of a civil war, this would work, but only if there was true cultural competence at all levels, even outside the military. At its height, in Iraq, there were over 1,000 State Department personnel, and only three of them spoke Arabic well-enough to conduct interviews without terps? I will include the link on this below, but at any level this is just disastrous, should be plain unacceptable. One of the world's largest embassies, staffed to the brim with real tweed out of touch liberal types (i wouldn't bet many of these people had hard soldiering experience among them, not even boot camp). So, even outside the military, you already have a clear leadership logic that seems to posit that they will just learn English and see 'our help' as total generosity. Then, the real people in charge, people with utterly no real experience in what they are doing are packed into the US Embassy, and we wonder why communication with the Iraqis was so difficult? We can do better. This was just common sense. So, we are already coming in from a holier than thou attitude, by implicitly putting them down so they can be helped. It gets even crazier in Afghanistan. The Taliban, unlike the Viet-Cong or Saddam Hussein's Iraq, really DID harbor terrorist groups with the will and capacity to strike into the US, and there, I would say there was a real legitimate stake to win. Afghanistan ended up getting the short end of the stick on every level for years, and only for what, two or three years, under a trumped up Iraq style surge, did Politicos in the US even begin any sort of serious commitment there? Too little, too late.

The politicians in every case example did their own numbers that also didn't help. Sometimes, reality is just needed. It was bad enough all these campaigns were staffed by narrow-minded types, but it gets worse when the politicos don't even listen to their own generals. So Iraq was a 'light and fast' war, if I remember correctly, about every General Officer in the whole Army right before March 2003 had implored at least doubling the troop count to successfully occupy Iraq and seal off the borders. But what happens? Rumsfeld, with plenty of vision but no real knowledge of boot-level soldiering, and Cheney, with no military service record at all, decides to deliberately cut troop levels in half? For what? To satisfy putting down high-ranking brass publicly? The egos here are just astronomic.

All that being said, none of these were really lost militarily. They just went on too long and the American public got tired of it. None of these were decisively lost campaigns.

We don't learn from history. That is the real lesson here. Our enemies however, and they are out there, love learning our historical mistakes. Let's wait to see if the next boon-doggle will change this attitude.

One simple word...Politicians.

We haven't "won" a war really since the Unconditional Surrender of Germany and Japan in WW II. Every other engagement has had a different outcome. WW II was the last "good war" in that sense. We stopped "winning wars" because warfare morphed from being about getting something you wanted and the other guy wouldn't give you, into a fight for political subdivision -- we wanted to "export Democracy" and fight the export/import of "Communism." After the Cold War fizzled out The Gulf heated up in Aug 1991, Desert Shield/Storm/Peace and we had a clear vision of how to knock back the Republican Guard in Kuwait and beyond but the military was prohibited by the UN from taking Baghdad and ending it once and for all - winning. Instead we took a political solution to "import democracy" and it turns out democracy doesn't grow without the nutrient of cash for the new bosses and enough troops to back them up. Let's be clear -- The US Military never lost anything. The Political Masters who are America -- they've failed to properly lead us in these engagements. They need to take the heat. Nothing wrong with our Forces.

The US started to "lose" the second it started making military decisions based on political correctness instead of them being based on what makes the military a stronger fighting force.
That's the simple answer in the opinion of Spc. Mccumber.

I'll tell you why we keep losing . We keep losing because we are a kinder, gentler army that gets in trouble for use of force!!!!!!! Our veterans now and before that gave the ultimate sacrifice to make this country as great as it is would be turning over in their graves knowing what the politicians are doing to the finest military in the world!!!!! ROE for Afghanistan 03 was you could not fire your weapon until fired at!!!!!!! So basically one of my men had to possibly get wounded or even killed before we could do anything so we wouldn't get court martialed and spend the rest of our lives behind bars!!!!! Back in the day it was kill or be killed!!! Now it's get killed and if they miss capture them return them to base and have the secret squirrels pat them on the back and tell them not to worry they'll get better at shooting!!!!! When our military don't train 11B's to read a map or to navigate a map in basic training it's time to get out and that's what I did!!!!!

Respectfully Major, the United States has never lost a war. We have chosen in a few cases not to win, but we have never lost and there is a very big difference. I purposely didn't delve into the political abyss of why, as that is a much longer topic. I do believe that it is imporant to remember that it ultimately was our own choice to "lose" and not forced on any battlefied.

MAJ (Join to see)
I disagree with the articles.
Why is the US military being judged on a political/nation building outcome?
The military does not control the politicians and nation building is not completed in the term of one President. If the US remained in Iraq and Afghanistan for 70 years like we have in Germany, Japan, Korea, Philippines (longer) would the American left view these as losses?
Bottom line: The people judging want to us to lose and when the left is in control they make the decisions to ensure the loss is permanent.

The US Military has NEVER lost a war!!!!!
The Press and Politicians could not even accidentally win a war!
THE PRESS!!!!! My father, Capt Jack Stevens, was a CH-47 Pilot in Vietnam 6/67-6/68. He was on a resupply and extraction mission to a major fire base shortly after a major NVA attack. We successfully repelled the attack and the casualty rate was something like 100 NVA to 1 of ours. By ANY standards we won a major battle! US News & World Report ran a cover article about how badly we were beat in THAT encounter. Fake (LYING) News is more than 50 years old!
POLITICIANS: The Lying Bastard Johnson choose to send America’s finest to die by the TENS of THOUSANDS with NO intentions of winning.

The political parties keep getting involved and most of the time the politicians don't know where their ass is even if you gave them a one hand head start. The politicians think that they know the best way to fight a war so that they can claim that they won the war.

we never finish them