Wars are mostly endless defeats
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/02/world/europe/ukraine-russia-counteroffensive.html
Army Vet
May be surprising to hear that combat soldiers are warned that hard-fought resistance and defeat are the best way to train warfighters rather than seductive and misleading victories.
In war there are many more losses than wins although that is not publicized, instead successes are touted and the failures suppressed, “for morale” it is proclaimed by higher-ups in order to curry favor and funding from the homefront.
Even at the platoon level officers urge belief in victory to come to install courage in their enlisted, then the body counts tell the truth.
Had it ever been otherwise, wars would have been less started if foretold of defeat to come, so recruitment, funding, publicity are based on expected positive outcome although "difficult times are ahead."
Grunts fight for each other, say to hell with the officers and generals and politicians and arm-chair patriots rah-rahing as if sports cheerleaders.
News media are careful to censor ungodly horrors and run glorious accounts of herosim. No other way to report combat, declared Ernie Pyle, than to soften the violence, the hardships, the suffering, the pain, the grief of buddies dead. He died there still experiencing what never made it into the news except an obituary that praised his courage.
If you have been there, done that, you know what it's like to face defeat without end except by death.