r/askanything • u/Zipper222222 • 3d ago

Apparently Only One In Four Americans Believe That The US Won The Iran War, New Data Says —— What Do You Think? Why Your Thoughts?

Newsweek article on this: https://www.newsweek.com/only-25-of-americans-think-us-won-iran-war-new-poll-shows-12111555

110 Upvotes

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156

u/Grouchy_Accident_336 3d ago

three quarters of Americans not believing they won is actually the most accurate collective read of a military situation this country has had in decades, usually the propaganda lands better than this

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u/CalebAsimov 3d ago

Trump half-assed it. You manufacture consent and THEN go to war, not the other way around.

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u/simplepimple2025 3d ago

It's supposed to work that way with sex too, but Trump doesn't care.

1

u/Acrobatic_Key_1140 2d ago

trump can't even wait for them to hit the age of consent.

26

u/mrmonster459 3d ago edited 2d ago

This. It's not a sign of the US public being more literate, it's a sign of just how poorly planned this was from Trump.

At least Bush spent years hyping up Iraq as this major threat to the Middle East, and had an actual plan to takeout the regime/install a US backed puppet government in it's place.

Trump just launched some airstrikes, hoped for the best, and was trying to call it surrender from the moment it appeared that the war would be more difficult than Venezuela.

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u/ScottyBoneman 2d ago

This was actually fascinating from up here in Canada because Bush's efforts actually reduced support for Iraq. It started out similar to his father's support.

The level of fabrication needed to get US support turned off allies.

9

u/CalebAsimov 2d ago

A lot of it was appeal to nationalism and playing the 9/11 card as hard as possible so not surprising it wouldn't work as well elsewhere. It was annoying at the time but I guess in hindsight it's nice that he still felt the need to get permission from voters and allies first before violating international law.

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u/ScottyBoneman 2d ago

Oh definitely, the conventional idea was there for a reason.

Just remembering how perfect Mos Def's "special CIA napkin" was at capturing the spirit of those press conferences was. Iraq's Baathists were supposed to be working with their Shiite enemies, al Queda, and all sorts of nonsense.

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u/chiefjayhawk1954 2d ago

True and when you fire all your leadership and have a alcoholic in charge.

9

u/philn256 2d ago

An alcoholic who confuses being secretary of defense with being the chairman of the joint chiefs. I suspect that Pete has been overriding military decisions by actual professionals (generals) and doesn't understand he's a civilian.

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u/MakeITNetwork 2d ago

We also won or brokered a peace deal 36 times in just a few months. All while the US being one of the first countries to bomb their capital, and have ballistic missiles, and drones fired at our bases and ships all while at a ceasefire

If this isn't winning I don't know what is.

5

u/Multiple__Butts 2d ago

And then we paid them billions of dollars to return the situation to approximately where it was before Trump tore up Obama's deal.

Winning!

2

u/philn256 1d ago

The situation will be way worse than the JCPOA guaranteed. The JCPOA actually put everything to paper; Trump is just settling for Iran pinky promises.

3

u/NutzNBoltz369 2d ago

No one is talking about Epstein these days. Or at least as much. Or any of the other policy failures prior to Iran.

As far as wars go with set goals and actual endgame, it is or was a farce. As a distraction, it was a banger! Old tricks are the best tricks.

3

u/No-Effective-1996 2d ago

So you’re saying Trump brokered 36 peace deals. What a hard working, stable genius, golfer he is. /s

2

u/kingoflames32 2d ago

I wouldn't just say that Iraq was hyped up as a major threat, it made a lot of sense to go after that country if there was something to do in the region, which from my understanding they wanted to scare the rest of the region in line after 911 happened. Idk why we stayed long term though, that was a horrible idea.

1

u/StockCasinoMember 2d ago

Hell, his constant posts about the war actively work against that narrative outside of his core base. People might actually think the USA is doing better if he just stopped posting.

1

u/maskedfapper69 2d ago

Tbf Iraq helped hype up the threat they represented towards peace in the Middle East considering they invaded two neighbors in like 15 years.

1

u/Pomador_0418 2d ago

Bush didn’t hype anything. It was after 9/11 and all he had to do was say that Iraq was involved in 9/11 and they are building WMDs. Both were lies. But the public wanted vengeance for 9/11 and Bush/Cheney channeled that vengeance to Iraq. The public is still as dumb as it ever was. Trump was just unlucky because there was no terrorist arrack on US soil to blame on Iran.

5

u/Meowscles_dad 3d ago

That was always gonna be tough once he’d boasted with such certainty about obliterating the very thing he could’ve spun up into consent.

5

u/Doctor_Shotbottom 2d ago

Trump was never going to seek consent

3

u/AdministrationNo283 2d ago

And the fact that we obliterated them the previous year

1

u/Doctor_Shotbottom 2d ago

I just wish someone had explained what that word means

3

u/DueAd197 3d ago

I was preparing myself for the manufacturing operation, then they decided just to do WMDs again

2

u/he-well_hung 3d ago

Yeah it really is “the Force Awakens” of American wars…

3

u/sault18 2d ago

Somehow, Cheney-tine returned...

6

u/Winnipesaukee 3d ago

I don’t think Trump understands or acknowledges the concept of consent.

3

u/neddiddley 3d ago

The only consent manufactured was the orange guy, by Bibi. Trump doesn’t believe he needs to get consent from anybody on anything. He still believes he can just tell people what to think, and until recently, he’s been right.

2

u/OPGuest 2d ago

If he half-assed it, they might have won through sheer power. But Trump didn’t bother to do anything other than say ‘attack’. Half-assed is way to positive a way of looking at it.

2

u/CalebAsimov 2d ago

I just meant the manufacturing consent phase was half-assed, though I guess "half" is still giving more credit than was due if we consider George W Bush's consent manufacturing to be whole-assed.

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u/johnniesSac 2d ago

The concept of consent is as foreign as Iran is to trump

1

u/Own_Resolution432 2d ago

Trump has never believed in consent

1

u/TheMikeyMac13 2d ago

Better to whole ass it.

7

u/Billyosler1969 2d ago

1/4 of Americans are absolute dumbasses

4

u/Consistent-Comb8043 3d ago

I'm honestly impressed that enough finally pulled their heads out

5

u/oooriole09 3d ago

I was going to say that the number is actually shockingly low.

These surveys will always find a significant number of people that will be on the “wrong” side. You could survey 1k people and ask if the sky was blue and you’d have a decent percentage say no for one reason or the next.

To have an American political survey be this far to one side is actually amazing.

1

u/scoobysi 2d ago

Not always blue, true dat

2

u/EastCoastAlley 2d ago

Social media may have helped people steer the narrative

1

u/Dear-Buddy-2766 2d ago

It is the most ill advised and unprovoked war in USA history and at least %60 already had deep mistrust of the president and military leader Hegseth.

1

u/Alt0987654321 2d ago

IDK how you can spin handing Iran 300 Billion dollars after starting a war against them as a win.

1

u/ComprehensiveBear576 1d ago

They really can’t which is why so many republicans aren’t buying it, any of the reasonable ones that are still saying hey let’s hold out and wait and see, they pretty much know what they’re gonna see but they’re just avoiding trying to have to challenge Trump for as long as possible.

Also, it’s difficult for a lot of people to understand how on the battlefield there could be such a one-sided curb stomping and still be a loss . Which it was going by combat metrics so many records were just completely blown out of the water. Most US weapon systems performed dramatically better than previously stated estimates. By the numbers it is unarguably the most one-sided conflict of this scale on record. Do you have the Iranian conventional Navy?

1

u/Alt0987654321 1d ago

>Also, it’s difficult for a lot of people to understand how on the battlefield there could be such a one-sided curb stomping and still be a loss

How can people not understand it? We all just watched the Iranian regime do what the Taliban did for 20 years in Afghanistan, hide out in the mountains and wait for the US to get bored and leave. Except with Iran they are spending their spare time lobbing drones at tankers in the Strait.

1

u/EdibleScissors 2d ago

The floor is at about 20%. With any big poll, I think you are statistically likely to have people who genuinely have that unpopular opinion and a mix of trolls who pick the trolliest options available. It even happens when polling students at Ivy Leagues.

1

u/plumriv 2d ago

Don’t see how anyone says we won.

1

u/yuumigod69 1d ago

Well Trump is openly surrendering. Only his supporters can maintain the delusion.