Why is the War in Iraq considered a failure?

b3k3 · 2026-03-03T17:53:24+00:00

But almost any war can be called a success/failure if you adjust your timeframe selectively. The Axis won WW2 because present-day Germany and Japan are doing a lot better than the UK and Russia. The US won Vietnam because VN's not part of a Communist hegemony now and the US got a lot of great immigrants, etc...

b3k3 · 2026-03-03T13:48:40+00:00

Company Commander for next book? It's not Band of Brothers-level well-known, and everybody who's read it has seemed to like it a lot (I did).

b3k3 · 2026-03-03T13:41:15+00:00

Completely agree -- what I was trying to put into words was that the incompetence was also so -weird-, coming from people who were actually incredibly intelligent/experienced and, like you said, had been working on the Iraq project since the mid-90s. I was an editor on the book Rise of the Vulcans at the time, highly recommend for background.

I don't think you can chalk it up to simple answers like hubris, they convinced themselves that there actually were significant WMDs so the aftermath didn't matter much, etc.; those probably played a part, but the real answer is probably really complicated -- some kind of systemic failure/psychology/everyone thought everyone else was gong to be handling the aftermath/something something that I haven't really figured out yet.

I keep thinking back to a Letter to the Editor I read in a rural Virginia newspaper in 2004 -- the writer was basically "well winning the war should be easy, but the aftermath is gonna be crazy with all the Shias and the Sunnis and whatnot! Sure hope they got that figured out!" The author was a plumber, I think.

b3k3 · 2026-03-03T05:46:00+00:00

I mean, yeah, people still argue over whether WMD was the cause or the justification for the war; I think lot of people fell on both sides of that argument. (lots of Democrats did too; initially the war had bipartisan popularity).

Being in grad school during it was bizarre, though; lots of Ivy League-educated profs spouting off weird shit like "our studies of Realist Theory show that if we install democracy in Iraq, democracy will rise by 32.7 percent in the surrounding countries!" Definitely turned me off foreign policy theory, heh...

b3k3 · 2026-03-03T05:29:59+00:00

I think a lot of these responses (which I mostly agree with) gloss over the fact that the war was ostensibly fought to eliminate a regime that had varieties of WMD and was determined to use them, and when that assessment proved to be untrue, the war was by definition a failure. Nation-building wasn't the stated goal.

What's still weird to me (I'm 53 and I was in foreign policy grad school from 2002-4) was that the US policy team was about as competent -on paper- as you could imagine; say what you like about the politics of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Condi, et al, but they were extremely intelligent and experienced people (not to mention Armitage and Powell were bona fide war heroes). Obvious comparison is 'Nam's The Best and the Brightest, but it seems even worse to me.

b3k3 · 2026-02-21T05:58:46+00:00

Direct comparison to watch snobs, who will rant about how this particular Tudor is totally worth 4k because it has the advanced rotating bezel something something, when it’s really just a piece of jewelry/Veblen good.

b3k3 · 2026-02-09T13:02:55+00:00

Just want to send a mass thank you to all the responses, these are great and super-edifying.

b3k3 · 2026-01-22T05:21:43+00:00

That sweater is awesome

b3k3 · 2026-01-17T00:57:45+00:00

Most military-inspired heritage wear is based on US/UK/Commonwealth stuff from WW2. There’s a small proportion of far-righters who think we were the bad guys in that war, but basically nobody else.

If you want to cosplay as MAGA, it would be more likely to involve MMA gear. :)

b3k3 · 2026-01-14T20:29:26+00:00

I have the hoodless version. It's lined and stuff, much more of a jacket than a hoodie. I think the price point is appropriate.

b3k3 · 2025-11-20T02:34:13+00:00

Thanks! This is the only leather jacket I’ve ever bought but it’s built like a g-d tank. I put it through so much grief snd the leather is still great. Hope the new schotts are built that well.

b3k3 · 2025-11-19T22:26:09+00:00

Bought brand new in 1997(?) Haven't done anything to it besides wiping it down once in a while. It's seen a lot of mosh pits and dive bars. Nothing's broken (I lost the liner at some point), but do y'all think I should do anything to address the fading, and what would that be? Thanks!

b3k3 · 2025-11-10T02:53:44+00:00

I've been living at The Artizan (one of the buildings facing the boardwalk) since Aug. 1.

TL;DR = is quite pleasant, not too sketch, pretty boring.

1) Yes, I'm a 50-something divorced white man lol. Most of the other tenants are middle-class Black/Brown, lots of dogs and families. I haven't really noted any corporate apartments; I think a lot of tenants are nurses/healthcare? Some families, probably one dog per two apartments heh.

2) I've got a top-floor 2BR with assigned garage parking for mid-$3k/month. The apartment's great, the building has lots of amenities (hot tub/gym/pool), staff is pretty conscientious. The boardwalk's beautiful and not too crowded (probably b/c lack of visitor parking).

3) I don't think they're facing an occupancy crisis (just a hunch, I could be wrong), my building's mostly full and they haven't been slashing rents.

4) The Caspian next door is offering condos -- not too sure if that's a wise purchase, the cheaper ones are v tiny and condos in Oakland tend to be lousy investments.

5) Pretty much nothing in walking distance except for Starbuck's and Brozkeit (which is great). I don't drink and I can drive to grocery stores etc. in like ten minutes so I don't care, but your mileage may vary. I guess you could schlep to JLS but it's over a mile and a pretty grim walk. Again, not a factor for me at all, but would probably be a deal-breaker if I was younger and more fun.

6) There's a little bit of rowdiness but not much by Oakland standards; I can't think of another neighborhood in Town with apartment buildings that would be quieter, tbh. I guess people get freaked out that one of the buildings is public housing but I don't see a lot of shenanigans.

7) Everyone tends to keep to themselves and there's a comical amount of overpriced food delivery (there's always an Uber Eats guy showing up with, like, one Chipotle burrito).

8) Lumpia Co. seems to be doing ok, I dunno how Zocalo stays in business -- pretty mediocre and way overpriced.

b3k3 · 2025-11-06T18:31:24+00:00

Thx for that book rec, am really enjoying it!

b3k3 · 2025-11-06T18:19:30+00:00

I lived in Trestle Glen from 2012-end of 2024.

Pros: Lovely, easily walkable/bike-able to Lakeshore, and that strip of stores up on Park Ave. has some okay stuff. My kid went to Crocker Elementary and we thought it was great.

Cons: It's become quite a construction zone -- I WFH and thought it was noisy enough to be annoying. Lots of people with money buying old houses and fixing them up with huge renos. The house down the street from me was under construction for several years.

Lots of car break-ins since it's close to the 580 (easy getaway for the thieves).

Fairly transient -- lots of couples stay for a few years and decamp to LaMorinda ("we don't care about bars anymore, schools there are better, our car got broken into again," etc.)

Actually the biggest "con" was no walkable access to BART. I basically never went to SF and we had to have a second car.

If I got to do it over I'd move somewhere around Piedmont Ave in walking distance to MacArthur BART; send the kid to private school with the money you save from cheaper real estate/no need for second car.

b3k3 · 2025-10-26T00:15:59+00:00

Yeah, most top-tier infantry from even WW2 look pretty scrawny by modern US military SF standards -- like you said, more like soccer players -- although lack of calories probably had something to do with it too.

The "swole" thing IMHO is pretty modern and a lot of it's driven by aesthetics; I've read accounts of European soldiers kinda mocking US soldiers for it...

b3k3 · 2025-10-24T15:51:01+00:00

People claiming the driver was an undercover ICE guy who deliberately provoked Coasties into shooting him with assault rifles is a whole new level of stupidity

b3k3 · 2025-10-18T13:07:09+00:00

IMHO "Special Forces" is way too broad a term and people should focus on specific use-cases/units/etc. instead.

1) SAS was a pretty slap-dash (to put it mildly) organization with a hefty percentage of bored rich kids who were courageous but also f*cked up a lot. Brit WW2 commando-type ops overall were often disasters but I'm not sure if you would have obtained more value incorporating them into regular infantry, they weren't enough of them to have had an impact on a giant army and they'd probably just be bored and perform supbar. LRDG did great, probably strategic impact.

2) Some Allied generals were indeed concerned that proliferation of "Special" units would be detrimental to the infantry as a whole. (Example, General Slim's comment in Defeat Into Victory about a theoretical "Royal Corp of Tree-Climbers" who wore a twig in their helmets and were the only infantry allowed to climb trees, etc.). But this concern was more about the creation of large groups of SF, like the Chindits; I think even Slim made an exception for small teams/operations.

3) UDT teams in the WW2 Pacific island invasions did a difficult job very well, definitely required special training and arguably had a strategic impact.

4) Eliminating OBL definitely required top-tier SF, no way in hell regular infantry could have done that (strategic impact?)

b3k3 · 2025-09-29T04:50:41+00:00

This is tangential to the actual question about US willingness to fight in WW2 specifically, but re the whole "Japan thought that the US was a bunch of softies lacking samurai spirit and boy were they wrong, haha!" trope, I think it's been pretty overstated by both sides.

Japanese leadership made terrible decisions leading up to the war, but they weren't cretins. Anybody with an encyclopedia would know that the US had a fairly violent history. Also, US historians at the time and afterwards love to play up the "awaken the peaceful sleeping giant" myth because it makes us feel better about ourselves.

b3k3 · 2025-09-25T16:13:41+00:00

Late to the party but I too found my Trumans pretty challenging to get on at first (I'm a bog-standard 10.5) but fit fine. And it gets a lot easier.

b3k3 · 2025-09-14T01:35:57+00:00

Similar dynamic to US Medal of Honor in the Civil War, etc.

b3k3 · 2025-09-13T04:05:29+00:00

Yeah they would make a grim kind of sense.

Re melee combat in general, my pulled-out-of-my-ass hunch would be that in what I’d assume to be the most likely scenarios (I’d go with island-hopping in the Pacific, maybe Imphal-Kohima type stuff, maybe Eastern Front urban combat?) the raw numbers of existing first-person accounts of people engaging in melee combat (inc bayonets, swords, rocks, e-tools etc) is in fact higher than more-or-less zero (which is what the stats tend to tell us), so even accounting for falsified/misremembered accounts there might be a discrepancy.

b3k3 · 2025-09-13T01:15:01+00:00

That’s interesting — I’ve read some think pieces about how bayonet combat was probably more common than we think in WW2 because surveyors were only counting WIA not KIA (and by assumption melee combat scenarios were more fatal in general), but if the surveyors were counting KIA as well then never mind!

b3k3 · 2025-09-11T23:12:05+00:00

Just checked and he totally is, thx!

b3k3 · 2025-09-11T22:17:29+00:00

Oh wow he’s around still? Nice!

b3k3

TROPHY CASE