No One Is Competent

The German invasion of the Soviet Union in WWII, codename Operation Barbarossa, was the single largest military operation in human history. On the morning of June 22 well over a hundred Wehrmacht divisions smashed into the USSR. This same army that had spent the previous years overrunning Poland, Denmark, France, Norway, etc had its sights set on the expanses of the east. Things, however, did not...

Operation Eagle Claw - a daring special forces mission conducted deep behind enemy lines to rescue innocent American civilians - had all the hallmarks of an action movie story. Save for the part when it failed almost immediately as it began. The demise of Eagle Claw is often blamed simply on a series of mechanical failures and pilot errors, but a closer look at the planning and execution of the op...

On September 11th, 2001, terrorists hijacked four airliners in the US and used them to kill almost 3,000 civilians. The events of 9/11 would lead to both a global war on terror and perhaps the most expensive manhunt in human history, the hunt for Osama bin Laden. In spite of his notoriety, bin Laden's history and the mistakes made both by him and those seeking to stop his plans and eventually capt...

Sometimes the deadliest events in human history are ones that were not meant to be tragic. Sometimes plans laid out with good - or at least, neutral - intentions cost the lives of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people. Perhaps no single event in modern history illustrates this phenomenon better than the "Great Leap Forward," a set of policies enacted in 1950s China that resulted in a fam...

The Mongols are remembered as perhaps the greatest conquerors in world history. Great nations throughout Eurasia felt the wrath of Genghis Khan and his successors as they built the largest land empire in human history. In that light, the failed attempts of Kublai Khan to subdue Japan are a stark outlier, so much so that the two Mongol defeats are commonly just viewed as being the result of poor we...

Popular discourse on Afghanistan is steeped in mysticism, with the land ascribed by many almost supernatural immunity to foreign invasion. The idea that Afghanistan is and has always been the “Graveyard of Empires” can result in us both ignoring the successful conquests of the region by foreign powers and failing to analyze the errors of those who were unsuccessful. While most Americans think of t...

Based in Yokosuka, Japan, the United States Navy's 7th Fleet is responsible for patrolling some of the most economically and strategically important sea lanes in the world, making it one of the most important elements in the entire US Armed Forces. One can thus imagine the shock when over the course of about three months in 2017 not one but two 7th Fleet destroyers were involved in two separate co...

From the rocks and clubs to swords and guns, humans have been developing weapons for about as long as we’ve existed as a species and using them in a variety of ways — sometimes competently, sometimes not. Nuclear weapons stand at the pinnacle of this quest for evermore destructive implements of death. Built with materials that can kill via the emission of invisible particles and capable of wiping...

The United States Army prides itself on its long record of success on the battlefield, a sentiment built on a genuine history of victories in conventional warfare. Like any military, however, the Army is not invincible, and the those instances that display its mistakes and vulnerabilities often do so in a dramatic manner. On this episode of “No One is Competent” we’ll be talking about the Battle o...

In November of 2001 Rudy Giuliani was the most popular politician in America, seen as defending the nation from foreign threats. In November of 2020 Rudy Giuliani was a national pariah, charged with dismantling the democracy that brought him to power. How did Giuliani rise to glory, and how did he fall so far? Join us on this episode of “No One Is Competent” to find out.

Join us every other Friday for new episodes of "No One Is Competent"