We Win Because You Did Not: Difference between revisions

Line 27:

== [[Film]] ==

* Demonstrated on a small scale in ''[[Thank You for Smoking]]'' when the protagonist demonstrates this as a debate strategy to his son, using a comparison of icecream flavours as an example.

{{quote|'''Joey:''' But you didn't prove that vanilla was the best.

Line 36:

== [[Literature]] ==

* In the ''[[Ender's Game]]'' series, the apex of the book is the final battle for the alien home world between the children who fight for the human side and the alien home world's defense fleets. The humans are wildly outmatched, and instead of using tactics to fight fleet-against-fleet, they end up {{spoiler|firing a missile at the home world itself, atomically deconstructing the planet into a dust cloud. It helped that the enemies had a [[Hive Mind]] and the center of that [[Hive Mind]] was on that planet...}} This mirrors an earlier victory Ender achieved during his time in Battle School. Unable to defeat the numerically superior force against him, he ordered his army to {{spoiler|go through the opponent's forces and take the gate, and thus claim victory. Even though his army was shot to pieces to the extent that he could barely muster the necessary 5 soldiers to do so. He technically won by taking the gate before his opponents could take his gate.}}

* This was a repeated strategy of Zandramas in ''[[The Belgariad|The Malloreon.]]'' The theory was: before the Choice could be made, certain conditions had to be fulfilled by both sides. If Zandramas killed someone on the good side who hadn't fulfilled their condition, she'd probably win by default. The same was true for the other side; Poledra points out that if the Child of Light gets to the Place That Is No More and found no Child of Dark waiting for him, he'd probably win by default.

Line 52:

== [[Professional Wrestling]] ==

* The "disqualification rule", which specifies that a champion can only lose his title by pinfall or submission, often turns into a form of this trope. A champion will "defend" his title by walking away from the ring (taking a countout loss) or by intentionally forcing a disqualification loss -- but keeping the title, as he wasn't pinned or forced to submit. One loss is, of course, considered less important than the storyline glory of being a champion. However, a booker who has a champion do this too often risks having the public [[X Pac Heat|turn on the champion]] -- costing everyone money in the long run. (Sometimes a champion headed in this direction is forced into a match where this rule is suspended.)

* The "disqualification rule", which specifies that a champion can only lose his title by pinfall or submission, often turns into a form of this trope. A champion will "defend" his title by walking away from the ring (taking a countout loss) or by intentionally forcing a disqualification loss -- but keeping the title, as he wasn't pinned or forced to submit. One loss is, of course, considered less important than the storyline glory of being a champion. However, a booker who has a champion do this too often risks having the public [[X-Pac Heat|turn on the champion]] -- costing everyone money in the long run. (Sometimes a champion headed in this direction is forced into a match where this rule is suspended.)

Line 88:

*** Technically speaking, the idea of Thermopylae was to delay the Persian army's advance into Greece for as long as possible, until the city states could raise their own levies. Because the battle only lasted 3 days, it was a strategic defeat for the Greeks who had intended to hold out for longer. However, an unintended consequence of the early loss was that the Greek fleet retreated from the simultaneous sea battle of Artemisium instead of fighting to the death (because their strategy depended on holding both points). This led to the Persian fleet growing overconfident, overextending themselves, and suffering a devastating defeat against the surviving Greek fleet at the Battle of Salamis weeks later. This ultimately cost the Persians the war by forcing their fleet to withdraw to Persia and destroying their army's supply lines, effectively showing just how well long-term planning and war go together (i.e. not at all).

* In chess, if one side only has a king, there are quite a few combinations of pieces that can force checkmate. However, if they don't have enough pieces, or if they just make a mistake, the losing side can sometimes manoeuvre into a stalemate, which is technically a draw.

** Not only is a draw always better than a loss, but drawing against a much stronger opponent is considered a great accomplishment.

* The Alamo: A small group of Texans hold out in an old mission, stalling the Mexicans long enough for the rest of the Texans to gather and strike.

* The War of 1812: Even though America failed to accomplish most of its primary objectives, the US maintains that it "won" because it didn't technically ''lose'' ("We got respect from Britain"). While Canada takes the same opinion for themselves ("We threw back multiple American invasions from our lands").

Line 95:

** Most of the objectives of the War of 1812 simply became obsolete with the end of the Napoleonic wars.

* Antietam: The Union held the field at the end of this bloody battle, but suffered greater losses than the Confederacy. Despite this, by claiming the battle as a victory, Lincoln was able to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which changed the whole character of the war in the Union's favor.

** On the immediate strategic level, Antietam was a victory because it stopped the Southern invasion of the North, forcing the invaders to retreat and preventing them from taking Washington. In that respect it is very much comparable to the Peninsular Campaign and Seven Days Battles before Richmond earlier in 1862 and to the Gettysburg campaign of 1863. In both cases the defending forces forced a retreat on the attackers while sustaining greater losses themselves. Had the Army of Northern Virginia succeeded in taking Washington in the Antietam campaign, that would have made it much more likely that France and Britain would have recognized the Confederacy as an independent nation.

*** Gettysburg also can be seen as a good example of this trope, even though the South's chance of victory were smaller in 1863 than in 1862. The Southern invasion of Pennsylvania was beaten back, but the Army of the Potomac sustained the heavier losses and Meade did not dare to attack the Army of Northern Virginia as it retreated south. However, at the same time Vicksburg fell and the Confederacy was cut in two as the Union forces brought the entire length of the Mississipi under its control. During the entire war there was a certain pattern that while the CSA was quite successful in Northeastern Virginia - even making a few attempts to take Washington, D. C. - this was more than offset by Union victories in the other war theaters. A big problem both with the way Jefferson Davis and Lee planned the war and with many accounts of the war after it was over was that too much importance was attached to the war in Virginia and not enough to the Western fronts.

** This trope was the win condition of the South - whilst the North had to actively defeat them, the South only had to hold out long enough for the North to sue for peace due to war weariness, or to be recognised as an independent nation by Britain and France (the superpowers of the age). Both of these came close to happening at different times during the war.

Line 103:

* This is the way French citizens see the Second World War and the Resistance: there ''was'' the defeat in the battle of France, and Hitler going to Paris, and the Vichy Regime, but there ''were'' French who never surrendered between '40 and '45, who hurt the Nazi war machine, saved the lives of three-fourths of the French Jews, and fought alongside the Allies until the victory.

** Didn't hurt the Nazi war machine much, though. Vichy France was a huge provider of war materiel for the Axis cause, and their government collaborated more enthusiastically than the Germans had even asked for in a failed effort to gain German respect. And while many French Jews were merely persecuted rather than executed, German Jews who'd fled to France for sanctuary were put into internment camps by the old Republican government, and cheerfully sent to the death camps by the succeeding Vichy government. The Free French forces do get some credit here, but they had nothing to do with the plight of the Jews of France.

* The Korean War: The Chinese and North Koreans didn't succeed in uniting Korea. The United Nations (mostly Americans, with about twelve percent being Europeans or Turks) and South Korea only "won" because they stopped the advance of communism and inflicted incredibly high casualties against the enemy, but in reality at the end of the war everything was pretty much status quo.

** Except for the 2.8 million people killed due to North Korean aggression.

** Technically the war is still on going as no peace treaty was ever signed between North and South Korea, and China and The United Nations never declared war on each other.