They’re literally too dumb to run an insurgency right:
Along with the rise in Taliban–and to some extent, al Qaeda violence–has come a sharp increase in the number of insurgents killed by Coalition (mostly American and Australian) troops and Afghan security forces. The Afghan diplomat said about 3,500 Taliban have been killed this year, and several top commanders captured. There’s been a major tactical shift recently in how the Taliban insurgency attacks Coalition forces. Of course, IEDs and suicide bombings are up 20 percent over last year’s 5,388 total, but there have also been a number of large-scale engagements waged against allied patrols that wind up resulting in high enemy losses. It seems anathema to the usual tactics of an insurgency, where small hit-and-run attacks prove most effective at driving government forces and their allies out of the fight. And it speaks to a growing trend of military incompetence within a Taliban depleted of its experienced, native-born fighters…
The New York Times reported on October 29 that the foreign fighters “are not only bolstering the ranks of the insurgency. They are more violent, uncontrollable and extreme than their locally bred allies.” But a top American commander based in Kandahar–where the Taliban movement was born–explained that from his perspective the foreign fighter influx is actually a sign of weakness. The high body count is a result of “ineptitude” he said, and stems from the fighters’ lack of experience and training.
The New York Times combined ideological bias with banal and shallow ignorance to get an anti-jihadist storyline exactly backwards? The hell you say. At least the Democrats will have something to point to when they start pushing for a withdrawal from Afghanistan.
References:
* Taliban Bench Warmers [Weekly Standard]
Previously:
* Taliban-Era Photos Prove That Brutal Islamist Repression Of Sexuality Not So Successful, Kind Of Surreal
* British Intelligence: Iran Giving Bombs To The Taliban
* Mere Rhetoric: Breaking: US Rolling Up AQ In Iraq and Afghanistan?
