also beards = unemployment

and man-buns

I guess if you move the goalposts enough you can cope anything into being a US victory- nothing is more American. I'm not going to spend the effort explaining everything wrong with this so I'll just agree to disagree... but this is hardly some woke Pentagon-insider shit, it's just old-man cope and dad history you can hear in the aisles of any museum relic room or American Legion meeting in rural America

Portland is indeed a mess, I didn't think that was up for discussion. Have you been to the South lately though?

I'm 35, minors in american military history for fun

Assuming america is responsible for all the world's ills is as america-centric as assuming it's responsible for everything that's great. "We" didn't do anything. Specific groups with specific interests did. The native americans genocided one another long before "we" ever got here. The ottomans were genociding people left and right for hundreds of years. Nobody starts a protest against the insanely colonial exploits of turkey though, do they? Actual real slavery still exists all over the world right now, america ended it 150 years ago with a brutal civil war. If the starbucks baristas could take five seconds to learn something about world history I'd respect them a lot more.

Didn't say we're responsible for all the world's evils or that we're even a force for evil in the world at all-- on the contrary, I think Western culture either in the European or Yankee (not Dixie) form is humanity's best hope for survival and eudaimonia. I think you're assuming that because I sympathize more with some liberal beliefs that I agree with all of them. All I said was that we're shit poor at fighting wars and that's a fairly verifiable statement to any un-biased observer.

It's one of the best arguments against reparations and the notion of 'keeping scores' across generations: where are my reparations for 700 years of my ancestors in the Mediterranean being taken as galley slaves and concubines by the Ottomans and Berbers?

Have you had a look at the "rules of engagement" Western troops usually have to follow? The ground that could be gained much more quickly if they didn't exist. The rules are there to prolong wars, keep arms dealers rich and keep governments borrowing more currency.

America as a great example in Iraq, could have forcibly carpet bombed much more than they did and taken out most of any resistance in a couple of weeks. As long as there's access to oil and other deals with any provisional government that's the main aim.... "winning" as we think of it is never on the cards.

What does military history have to do with Portland? It's a microcosm of everything the left has forgot.

Think about today's 25 year old. They were 6 years old on 9/11/2001. I remember where I was when the planes hit the towers. I was actually playing EQ that morning when my dad said turn on the TV.

Those 25 y/o beta boys do not remember. They never saw the people jumping to their deaths to avoid the flames. Or the firemen who ran up stairs knowing they likely weren't coming back down. Or the people crushed as the building fell.

Remember the American Flags that lined every street after 9/11? I do. These kids have no national identity, they grew up on anime and participation ribbons. Their world view is fed to them by globalist liberal media with a marxist agenda.

Portland rioters have raised the stakes, taunting us to respond with real force because they know we wont. The price is too high. Its not the peaceful protestors, its agent provocateurs of the embedded radical left.

So really, what is a means to restore order? We are reduced to just letting these people shit in their own beds.

Really? Carpet bomb them?

most of the civilians up in any war zone just want to be left alone and try to figure out how to live and enjoy their lives.

I'm a Go-Army kinda guy but my name is not Bomber Harris and I do not condone Dresden.

Agreed Swish. Just like you in the UK have been generous in letting middle easterners, Muslims, and Africans come to your country for better opportunities and a better life. The USA has also done the same. But with both of our countries, the Middle East, Africa and Muslims are not equally as tolerant to allowing westerners to go there. The same can be said with military force. If we wanted to, we could have blown the hell out of Afghanistan and Iraq with near zero American casualties.