Droning On

Steyn Online ^ | 4/20/2026 | Mark Steyn

[Ultra Sonic 007]

...Wars are easy to start but rather harder to stop - and, as Washington should have learned in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, when they do eventually stop, it's not in any place that would have seemed remotely plausible back when you started. In Kabul, you hand the Taliban back more territory than they'd held twenty years earlier; in Baghdad, you invest a fortune in blood and treasure to create a highly functional client state of Iran; in Damascus, you buy a new suit for the al-Qaeda honcho's blood-soaked deputy you let talk his way out of Abu Ghraib, and then install him as successor to the blood-soaked but secular dictator, to let him get on with slaughtering Syria's Christians.

It is not just that we lose all the wars but that we lose them in ways that no reputable editor would have published in the early days, and indeed which did not exist outside the more advanced rounds of Mad Libs:

"You know those inbred goatherds who only shower once a month? We're gonna leave 'em enough firepower at Bagram for them to take on a nuclear neighbour...

"You know that country song about not knowing the difference between Iraq and Iran? Well, an easy way to remember is this: Iran are the mullahs we put in the Axis of Evil, and Iraq is the country your sons were sacrificed for in order that we could hand it over to the evildoers who've been totally evil for (altogether now) forty-seven years...

"Oh, and you know those al-Qaeda guys we've been fighting since the beginning of the century? If your regime-change rolodex is a bit thin, there's some awfully promising talent on the AQ executive board..."

Ah, but this time it'll be different, because this time it always is...

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TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Iran; News/Current Events; Ukraine
KEYWORDS: blowhard; china; epicfury; hesrighjt; ilovemark; iran; marksteyn; mullahloversonfr; russia; trump; ukraine

[Ultra Sonic 007]

And since Mark Steyn brought up China, the rest of the world is considering buying in more into green energy, which China coincidentally has a stranglehold on.

And so the wheel turns.

[vmpolesov]

I find the author annoying

[Rad_J]

I remember when Vietnam invaded America and destroyed half of our country.
I remember when Iraq took over the US government and Iraq still has bases in the US.
I remember when we lost the Afghanistan war and gave the country back to all of the dead taliban members to run the country again.

The definition of war is to destroy shit and kill people. Even in Vietnam, 1-3 million dead and only 65k were Americans, including my uncle.

The USA has stopped fighting wars but we haven’t lost any wars. Have we ever surrendered and accepted the enemy’s demands? No never.

[Dr. Sivana]

I find the author annoying

For many, Mark Steyn is an acquired taste. His fight against Michael Mann in court alone has earned him a hearing.

[webheart]

I used to love Mark Steyn. Absolutely amazing dry humor and great satire plus an intelligent take on pretty much everything. He was great during the fake pandemic. I listened to him almost daily. I learned that Benny and Bjorn from Abba wrote a musical called Chess which included the song One Night in Bangkok. He played the video of Mike Tyson doing the song for karaoke. Quite entertaining.

I think he has had some heart attacks and surgeries and I personally think he’s gotten quite cynical over the years. Being near to death can change a man’s perspective. Still I don’t think he has been as near to death as Donald Trump has been because he never had a bullet hurtling straight towards his brain.

[aquila48]

Mark will soon become like Ann Coulter here in FR.