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If the US won this war, then it has to go down as the first war in history that required Op-eds to convince anyone that we had won. I don't think the Civil War or WWII required any explaining. Hell, Iraq was a more clear-cut victory, and I don't know that that's a favorable comparison.
The Election of 1864 was about whether it was impossible to defeat the South and the Union had to negotiate peace. The party that believed this won 45% of the vote. The war did not even last another six months!
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I have at least read op-eds attempting to convince me that Vietnam and Iraq were, in hindsight, successful (or at least not complete failures). Vietnam is, despite the ultimate victory of the North in its civil war, today a closer ally of the US than of nominally-communist China (somehow a win for Domino theory stans?). Iraq is, while imperfect, a much more stable and Western-aligned nation than under the Hussein regime. I'm not sure I really agree with either, but I don't think they're completely false. The "what if" of the Arab Spring on a non-Iraq-war hypothetical seems difficult, but the current timeline is at least plausibly better than a Syria-like alternate timeline.
I don't find the others a very persuasive argument, but it might at least not be the first. This one is maybe a bit early to call, but isn't screaming great success.
Technically speaking, the USA did win in Vietnam- it withdrew in exchange for a promise by north Vietnam to respect the south's independence(our actual war goal). The first time it reneged on this promise the ARVN repelled them. The second time the ARVN collapsed in a fit of coup-proofing paranoia at around the same time and commie tanks took Saigon.
Pinkos like LBJ and Nixon were unwilling to invade the north after the liberal Eisenhower overthrew the Ngo family's regime and that made the US position impossible in the long run, but we achieved our actual war goal before withdrawing.
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I would argue that most wars after WW2 have been a bit messy and complicated to explain "who won." Now that it's frowned upon (and risking nuclear war) to just march in and plant your flag everywhere, wars become even more an extension of politics. Like you said, Iraq was a quick victory over their official army, but it took a very long time grinding down insurgents and backing questionable political factions until it's become enough of a self-sustaining democratic state to really call that a victory. Vietnam was even more of a mess, but it did eventually end with a Vietnam being a free, democratic state allied with the US... I'm not sure if anyone would call that a victory though.
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This is an unfalsifiable position. “If your argument was right, it would convince me. But I won’t allow it to convince me, therefore it can’t be right.” It could simply be the case that a large number of people refuse to admit that Iran has lost, which is actually very common in the history of war.
Can you name another example of this common occurrence?
Wars where the losing party refused to surrender long past the point of inevitable defeat:
Wars where the winning party (or parts thereof) thought they were losing, or going to face much greater resistance than they in fact did:
It is really not that hard for the losing party to be delusional or the winning party to be dismayed.
Here, the US has total air naval and space superiority, Iranian strength is diminishing, Iran’s economy is collapsing, America’s is almost unaffected, Iran suffers catastrophic military losses, America suffers almost none at all, trade through the Straits is picking up and Iran is becoming weaker and weaker at stopping it. And yet a large part of the commentariat is not just skeptical but actively reversing cause and effect or reading unvarnished Iranian propaganda. Not to put too fine a point on this but: it’s really not hard to imagine a lot of people believing something that is demonstrably false.
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Isn’t this basically the origin of the post WWI “stab in the back” myth?
The idea that Germany was actually winning but elements inside the country betrayed the German army.
I mean it is technically true that elements within Germany betrayed the German army. Germany was not winning and these elements included things like 'other parts of the German military', but the German revolution really happened.
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