>The whole of US society seems to be extremely tired with those "forever wars",

This is the main thing I would disagree with, as an American who rubs elbows with conservatives quite a bit.

A large amount of Republican and conservative Americans want war. They're primed for a war they haven't had this generation. There are a lot of relatively young conservatives who are eager for war. A weird number of Republicans don't think we lost Iraq or Afghanistan, or a few other wars, so they aren't tired of it yet.

Like 15-25% of Americans also believe in some form of the end times prophecy involving Israel. I'm not kidding about this. The number really is that high. A lot might not openly state that they believe in it, but they were raised under a religious teaching that says it will happen. Hegseth, literally, has a crusades tattoo and openly talks about eradicating Muslims on his weekly or monthly sermon.

But yes a majority of americans, like 60%, are extremely tired of ongoing wars. But I can also drive to towns in the western US where trump still has majority support and they will openly say they support the Iran war. America is really polarized and a lot of conservatives only talk about this stuff to family now.

I grew up super rural and have to deal/work with very religious conservative Americans often enough. There are a lot more of them than people think. They've just learned to self-segregate and keep to themselves and say things a certain way.

As an American, I think a better metric for outcomes of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq is: were we trading with the before the war and are we trading with them one generation after the war? The same is even true of WWII, a more important marker afterward is that we spent the rest of the 20th century trading prosperously with Japan and Germany.

Korea: the south became an economic powerhouse with whom we now trade for critical computer components and is a generally reliable ally in the region.

Vietnam: we now trade with them happily and enjoy generally productive relations, largely because they fought us for less than two decades but fought China for centuries and centuries.

Iraq: we aren't yet a generation past, but the government they have now is better than what they had under Saddam Hussein, even if it was almost immediately subverted by Iran. And jury is out on Iran because that hot war just started.

Afghanistan: we aren't yet a generation past, but very likely the most clear failure in this list. I remember thinking in high school (during the active phase of the war): "if we actually want to make a difference, we'd have to stay a century or more, and we don't have the will to do that the way the British or Russians tried to, and even they ultimately failed to make any local changes."

Europeans also need to realize that everyday Americans don't actually care about Europe very much and never truly have. It took the Lusitania to get us into World War I, Pearl Harbor (and Hitler's declaration of war) to get us into World War II, and the credible threat of the Soviet Union to keep us in Europe for decades after the war. The husk of Russia at the center of the Soviet skeleton isn't a credible threat to America, and the American reversion to the mean of isolationism began as the Cold War ended. That reversion completed sometime between 2010 and 2015. There is a new credible threat, but that is China, and even to well informed Americans Europe is slipping from their attention.

Most people in Trump's government probably don't care that much about reopening Hormuz quickly. Gas prices are only truly spiking in U.S. states where local environmental regulations have obstructed access to domestic and regional supply, and the largest of those states (i.e. California, New York) have broken against Republicans in every Presidential election (9 of them in a row) since the end of the Cold War.

Meta, Google did their parts too

That tragedy of the Maven targeting system is very much something that could have been optimized away, so no! Ad-servers optimizing minds could have been better employed on that project. (nothing to do with Java's Maven, look it up) Someone told me: "Think! Who were these girls' parents..." and that's BS it was really a big senseless mistake, now we're clearly in Vendettastan

I meant intercepting missiles, drones, etc

Having those minds eliminate targeting mistakes wouldn't make a difference?

The pay levels seem more of an inherent problem than the political winds.

They also didn't work under Biden and Obama.

The brightest minds were systematically bullied out of position, called racists/transphobes or accused of random crimes.

[flagged]

It's not "look I'm doing better than you," it's "please don't repeat our mistakes."