“name a war in the past 50 years that America has actually won?”
The Cold War. That’s the one where we bankrupted the Soviet Union as they spent all sorts of money trying to counter technologies the US had no intention of developing anyway.
The US budgeted $30bn ostensibly to develop the Space Defense Initiative. It looked impressive on paper and there were some technologies created that were leaked to the Russians who predictably went nuts trying to develop counter measures.
Fusion powered lasers. Harmonic weapons. Space based anti-missile platforms.
But you know what the best weapon was that we leaked to the idiots in Moscow? Some high tech cartoons of missile defenses in space. Scared the crap out of the fools at Znamenka 19 and the morons diverted precious hard currency reserves to countering something that didn’t even exist.
The $30bn for SDI was spent with clever accounting tricks for a few black projects like the B-2 bomber but much of it got diverted to education. Lots of new school buses were bought with this money.
By 1989 the USSR was busted, the military had been neglected so badly that thousands of tanks were abandoned in forests, plenty of aircraft ended up rotting, lots of ships were towed to graveyards in the Arctic to die.
Ronald Reagan’s maskirovka succeeded and in 1991 the once formidable USSR surrendered and disbanded.
Are there any other history lessons you’d like me to teach you?
LOL, doesn’t seem like the Soviet Union threat was really worth all that money after all. Certainly not all the lives.