"Season three is, in part, a sustained allegory for (and argument against) the Iraq War, to the point where the finale’s ironic title is “Mission Accomplished.” The comparisons between the “war on drugs” and the Iraq War are valid, up to a point—both are pointless, requiring engagement with a populace that has no interested in overbearing American troops—but the comparison still falls flat. Both are serious issues, but only one was started on a series of elaborate lies rather than a fundamentally wrongheaded approach to a serious policy problem (you know what I mean). The comparison is occasionally instructive, but often it’s more indicative of what was going on in David Simon’s head at the moment. And it helps date the show in a way that not even pagers could."
Agreed.