Comment by jack_pp
13 hours ago
It's about honor, I remember Saddam Hussein saying that after they held against the US for 40 days they "won" the war, because in their culture when a higher power entity goes against a weaker one, it is without honor and the weaker entity "wins" honor by being able to defend for that long.
That's not unique to their culture. Remember The Alamo? That was 190 years ago and we still celebrate our defeat.
We don't celebrate our defeat. We celebrate the men, the courage, the greater meaning.
The greater meaning of... holding a position over a period of time that seems unreasonable against a far superior force? Exactly like the GP described for Hussein? It certainly sounds like we're celebrating the same things, unless I misunderstood your point...
exactly, defeat.
The greater meaning of a revolution that was fought to preserve slavery.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/how-leaders-texas-r...
When we remember history, what we remember tends to be white-washed.
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Iran is pulling the same trick now, claiming it "won" just because the regime did not fall (yet). This is despite having lost most of their conventional army, navy, and air force, and having also mostly lost control of the straits of Hormuz.
I thought the claims of Iran winning were based on Iran's opponent collapsing. But it's a very slow collapse, and still not definitive yet, but some people are extrapolating the trajectory, to see that at the current rate, Iran's enemy will fall long before Iran does.
I mean, the Iranian regime has had one goal the whole war: survive. So it is a victory of sorts so far: the US has not achieved its strategic goal of regime change, and Iran has managed to inflict a fair amount of pain in retaliation.
(You could say the Taliban were even more thoroughly 'defeated' in Afghanistan while the country was occupied by the US, but it can hardly be said that it was a victory for the US either, given what happened as soon as they left).
> I mean, the Iranian regime has had one goal the whole war: survive.
No it wasn't. If Iran's only goal is to survive then it would have made peace with the USA and surrounding Middle Eastern territories decades ago.
This whole war is happening because Iran had great political ambitions than just thriving on its own.
Iran has been funding proxy terrorist groups for a long time now, specifically because it is trying to achieve larger goals than just surviving.
And on those fronts, well those proxy groups have taken a ton of damage and aren't long for this world.
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