There is an interview in the Arab News with a Taliban leader.

Mullah Abdullah seems almost disinterested in the strategy of war. He held a post in the Taleban Defense Ministry in Kabul ? Arabs, he said, were employed to maintain his vehicles ? but every military question receives a theological reply. "Even now the Americans have not succeeded in finding Osama Bin Laden and his Al-Quaida. They haven?t achieved this mission of theirs for us, Osama is a Muslim and a Muslim from another country is a brother. As for us, we will fight on in the mountains as guerrillas if we lose Kandahar ? and if we achieve martyrdom, this is victory.??

I was beginning to understand. Victory comes with success and victory comes with defeat. "The Afghans,?? Lt. Col. Alexander Burns pompously observed in 1841, "are not deficient in the imaginative faculties, and they may be quoted as a proof that invention precedes judgment.?? Yet for Mullah Abdullah, history and politics and defeat appeared part of a religious text.

It seems clear that with this crowd, promotions are based on neither intelligence nor clarity of thought. No wonder they're losers.