Vietnam was America’s bloodiest modern strategic defeat.

Afghanistan consumed 20 years before the Taliban returned.

But responsibility for both was spread across multiple presidents.

Hormuz could be different.

Trump inherited no U.S.-Iran war and a Strait of Hormuz where commercial ships passed without paying Iran.

He chose the war.

He defined the objectives.

He used overwhelming American military power.

He declared victory.

And months later, the United States is negotiating over the very thing it supposedly won:

Who controls passage through Hormuz, on what terms, and whether Iran can charge for it.

The final deal is not done.

That matters.

But if Iran emerges with practical authority over Hormuz that it did not possess before the war, while receiving major economic concessions, the historical comparison changes.

Not because this war killed more Americans than Vietnam.

Not because it cost more than Afghanistan.

But because the leadership failure would be unusually concentrated:

One president chose the war, chose the strategy, declared victory, and left America in a worse strategic position than the one he inherited.

That is the metric worth watching.

America’s worst presidential war failures should not be measured only by how much was lost on the battlefield.

They should also be measured by how much a president’s own decisions caused America to lose by going to war at all.