War - Did the "good guys" ever lose one?

[Deleted]

Fair enough, just don't blame a natural human tendency on gaming/television/big-screen.

That's like blaming people for having sex on porn.

Never did

[misspellar]

pretty much the whole middleast When the Mongols rolled through. Those guys straight up were there just to rape, pillage, kill, and generally fuck up shit. Because of that the ME is still an bassackwards place to this day in most places.

[Deleo]

History is written by the victorious.

[Frozenbeef]

I'm pretty sure native americans lost a few battles / wars to some horrible barbarians :S

[Deleted]

In every war innocent civilians lose.

Many mentioned that the Vietnam war was a war won by the "good ones".

Please ask the children who were burned by Napalm...

There are good guys and there are bad guys. Direct your attention to WWI and WWII as prime examples.

The winner of WW II were the allies, mainly the U.S.A, Great Britain and Russia.

The U.S.A. also committed crimes against humanity in WW II (Hiroshima, Nagasaki). U.K. and the U.S.A. produced many deadly firestorms in German and Japanese cities, mainly killing civilians. Russia sunk the Willhelm Gustloff in the Baltic Sea (killing 9000-11000 refugees, mainly children). Then many members of the Russians killed refugess fleeing to the West and raped the women in their way.

If you only condemn the Germans and the Japanese and think, that the above actions were right you are quite a hypocrite.

And no German and Japanese soldiers and especially the SS were not "better".

There is just no good side. Only that the victors didn't get punished. The members of the crew of the Enola Gay were celebrated as war heroes. Yay. War is always dehumanizing the opponents and glorifying your own side. Your cause is good and the cause of the others is bad. And who suffers the most, when madmen play war? The really good people who just want peace.

[Jackmoves]

Franco won the spanish civil war just to take an example, a fascist that did all kind of horrible things, latest I heard was that they systematicly stole children from the spanish leftwing claimed their children was dead at birth in the hospital and gave them away to rightwing families so they would be brought up as rightwing fascist.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

The U.S.A. also committed crimes against humanity in WW II (Hiroshima, Nagasaki).

Not to mention the internment of Asian-American US citizens during the second world war in PoW camps, because they "looked like Japanese people".

[Deleted]

Can be wrong but aint there a saying like "the good guys are those who win". And if I think about it in the early years when england and so on invaded america they kinda won as they killed a lot of native americans and took over the place, pretty much. Then I would say the good guys lost. And in africa it seems most of the time the bad guys win.

[Deleted]

I'm not sure there really were ever "good guys" to lose unfortunately. Other than the American revolution which out right fought for Freedom and some other wars after that. But if you look back over 300 years ago the world was pretty much ruled by tyranny, and almost all wars were one form of a tyranny against another. The strongest tyranny won and took over all others. Someone correct me if I am wrong but to my knowledge that is pretty much the way it was.

I'm sorry because I know this is how it is taught in American schools (showing the entire point that post-war propaganda will teach that the good guys won) but you cannot say that the good guys won in the American revolution, neither am I saying that the good guys lost. This was a war fought about two differing ideologies - namely monarchistic colonialism compared to republicanism - but has no grounds upon good vs bad. The 'Americans' fighting against British rule were british subjects who colonised the land for the crown (hence Jamestown), but then grew over generations to wish for self determination and fought for it. This is no different than any other rebellion (that's correct, revolution is a term applied to successful rebellions as it has a less negative air around it) that if it had been put down the colonists will have been vilified. It's no different to other rebellions, only the outcome determines whether people believe it was good or bad.

[implicationmmo]

Basic rule: the winner writes the history books.

Hence the "good guy" will always win.

If the germans had won WW2, then history would have remembered Hitler as being a hero.

[Mikael123]

Pretty naive to think that wars are battles between good and evil.

[Deleted]

good guys in a war? lol
killing people who kill people to show killing people is wrong...war sucks

also good guys depends on the side you´re on, we think we´re the good guys, al quaida thinks they´re the good guys. as ridiculous as this sounds to us, it´s as ridiculous as the opposite sounds to them

[Deleted]

Native americans against the invaders from europe. same in australie. They did do nothing wrong beside living on their native land and got butchered for it

[Deleted]

If you read history books you would see no one mentions good and bad guys there, OP.
You watch too many movies.

[Peacemoon]

Well you could argue that the good guys lost the American Revolution :P

[poser765]

People keep saying that the victors write the history books. I can't help but think this is a bunk cliche. Short of all out assimilation of the losers there will still be losers write history. It's not about victory or defeat, it's about perspective. Good and Bad guys are VERY subjective terms. There were plenty of Nazis who thought what they were doing was right...and there are (obviously) plenty of people who think the allies were just as despicable.

Also, to call Napoleon a mass murderer or that he tried to conquer Europe is sort of incorrect.

[Deleted]

You obviously have no knowledge of history if you can't think of more than 20 + wars when the "good guys" lost, just a few examples:
- Crusades ( by this i mean the king that lead the crusades and later on the hospitalier order aka the malta knights and the crusader knights, the later of which was "fought" for the "holy land" for years and years and made enough profits from it for the king of French to take a huge gamble only to steal some of them ), that were basically on the "winning" side for a few dozen years ( at least... and arguably they "won" the war considering that in the end Aka was under there control for ... how many hundred years ? )
- The Americans over the British in the independence war which is a debatable thing, but many would agree it resulted in Germany having the balls to start the first world war and almost all non US historians agree that it resulted in slavery continuing there for as long as it did ( the Southern states entered the war since the UK wanted to abolishing slavery ).
Those are 2 big example, there are a lot of smaller ones if you really wish to but that would imply me going to wikipedia and actually searching for things such as dates ,names and general opinions of the historians ( preferably not from those countries if the events were recent or important enough so there opinions are changed by there nationality ) so that i actually have correct information

Also, i would like to mention that in the grand scheme of things good and bad guy can be subjective but generally i would refer, and indeed i do so in my examples, to the good guy as being the ones that fight to defend themselves and fight for things such as human rights, free thinking, equality... etc

[Anakso]

History is written by the victors.

I was going to type that, exactly. To give an example, the Spartans vs Persians. The movie 300 portrayed the Persians as evil warlords and the Spartans honourable men defending their home. In actuality the Persians ran a vast and plentiful empire and only wanted the Spartans to become part of that empire, if they had they would have kept their king (The Persians didn't demand the king step down, only that he obey the king of kings) but lost most of their slaves (to freedom) and the Spartans...well they had slaves, and you don't get slaves by being good. (They would attack smaller villages and enslave the population)

[Deleted]

[strossus001]

Why do people think wars have winners, like a game of fucking Chutes and Ladders?

Do you know who won the Korean War? Nobody. Everyone lost.

Do you know who won WW2? America and the allies? No. Japan went from a nearly third-world shithole to the most successful nation on the planet.

Etc, etc.