Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
These are simple but important questions. Why is it like this?
They are ambushing us because they are patient, they know the terrain, they are hill people who were raised in and have finely honed senses of their environment, knowing the culture intimately they can hide amongst the people, they have great tactical flexibility, they are not impeded in mobility by excessive protection and creature comfort equipment, they have no media determined to point out every error or presumed error and they have a few good leaders who are well experienced and tactically competent and who are not risk averse.

We OTOH are not ambushing them as often as we should because we are too impatient, most units do not know the terrain and are not allowed to patrol adequately to learn it, we are predominately urban and have little sense of rugged rural terrain and the skills needed to survive in that environment, we are vastly different than most of the local people and do not fit in at all in most cases plus generally do not understand and, more importantly, dislike, the local culture -- and they sense this. We also do not have much tactical flexibility, are impeded in mobility by excessive protection and creature comfort equipment, have international media determined to point out every error or presumed error and even make up some errors if necessary, and have too few good leaders who are experienced, tactically competent and who are not terribly risk averse.

If you insist on simple overarching answers -- marginal training, lack of flexibility and risk aversion. Not necessarily in that order...