Vance’s Scoreboard

By Daniel Foster

Friday, September 04, 2026

 

At his much commented upon White House presser, the vice president said: “America has fought a lot of wars since I’ve been alive. Forty-two years. And we have won almost none of them until Donald J. Trump became the president of the United States.”

 

By my accounting, since 1984:

 

·         Operation Praying Mantis (Iran), 1988 — Clear U.S. victory. Iranian ships and platforms destroyed, U.S. objectives achieved.

 

·         Operation Just Cause (Panama) 1989–90 — Clear U.S. victory. Noriega removed and captured.

 

·         Persian Gulf War/Desert Storm (Iraq) 1990-1991 — Decisive U.S. victory. Kuwait liberated, Iraqi forces expelled and routed.

 

·         Operation Deliberate Force (Bosnia) 1995 — U.S. victory. NATO air campaign helped force Bosnian Serbs into Dayton settlement.

 

·         Operation Desert Fox (Iraq) 1998 U.S. victory in its limited objectives.

 

·         Operation Allied Force (Kosovo) 1999 — U.S. victory in its stated objectives. Serbian forces withdrew from Kosovo after NATO bombing.

 

·         Destruction of ISIS, (Iraq, Syria etc.) 2014–2019 — Unambiguous U.S. victory. Trump shares credit with Obama.

 

Even though it was a mistake to start it, I’d put the Iraq War in the U.S. victory column. Iraq today is not Switzerland, but it is a functioning state with an elected government, regular transfers of power, and security forces capable of keeping nonstate threats manageable. It has also held up in the face of the war on Iran, not a small thing for a state full of Shia and Kurds.

 

There are failures (though not strictly speaking losses) in the column as well. Somalia, Libya. Afghanistan was having a rough go of it when we pulled up stakes and quit.

 

In any event, it’s not clear to me that Vance’s statement is especially supportable.