British army defeated in Sanguin

The disastrous deployment of the British army in Sanguin is ending in an entirely predictable defeat. The incompetence and futility of these operations has been remarked here for the past three years. This has been an engagement of ignominy in which lives on all sides have been wasted for absolutely nothing. It will end with the British army retreating under a covering fire of spin.

Britain’s hopeless, careerist generals and dim officer corps are to blame as much as the politicians who dispatched them.  The Americans will now take over and they will probably do better, since unlike the British, they learn from their mistakes. But it is now too late. The battle in Sanguin, like the wider war, is entirely unwinninable, as not even the criterion for victory seems available.

The Defence of the Realm blog has as good an analysis as any.