All the lost wars had very vague objectives. A war where you try to fight a military while trying to “liberate” the population in the same area basically can’t succeed. In WW2 they bombed the hell out of Japan and Germany and after the war they were the winners who set the course. They were also lucky that Germany and Japan were functioning societies that didn’t have much violent infighting. In Gulf War 1 there was a clear objective to get Iraq out of Kuwait.

All the other wars depended on installing a friendly and competent government that would take over. That is a very hard thing to do. It’s too easy to support a friendly government that’s also corrupt and incompetent.

In Iran it will be the same problem after military victory. The US doesn’t want to run the show so what’s next? Nobody knows and it will take years to see where this is going. I hope they don’t destroy too much infrastructure there so people can rebuild quickly and society goes back to some normal.