I think the United States has lost basically every war it has fought since the creation of the military-industrial complex
I instinctually want to get defensive about this, but you're not wrong. Though I think it has more to do with our inability to commit to prosecuting a full-scale war in the nuclear age than with the MIC itself.
That said, you're not completely right either. We dominate the battlefield. When I was at CENTCOM, I had the privilege of talking to an Iraqi Colonel who had fought us as a young officer. He told me that fighting the United States was the most terrifying experience of his life. He had nothing at his disposal to counter the sheet volume of firepower coming at him or the coordination with which it was aimed. So his chain of command came to the same conclusion that the Vietnamese had come to forty years before. That you can't effectively fight the American military, you fight the American people's patience and through them, the will of their politicians. You take advantage of the rules of engagement that Americans hamper themselves with to maintain a sense of moral certainly.
The Iranians are doing this right now.
That’s a good point; I actually made a similar one at the outset of the Iranian war. The United States is actually pretty good at the shooting part of war, but the rest has reliably been a catastrophe for almost a century now
The MIC/defeat thing could just be correlation but I can’t help but wonder if there is some connection
I feel like everything we think we can win for real, we win in seven days or less (eg Venezuela and Grenada) but we go into big engagements with no clear victory conditions and then fail to secure victory.
Well this is where I wonder about the MIC; there is a profit incentive to go to war even when the general will is lacking. A huge portion of our collective resources is a hammer constantly looking for nails.
