Reuters quotes Rafik Hariri Center Nonresident Fellow Ramzy Mardini on the Kurdish peshmerga forces:
“One of the major faults in Kurdish history has been a tendency to be overconfident at the worst of times,” said Ramzy Mardini, non-resident fellow with the Atlantic Council.
“The Kurds have certainly oversold their military capabilities and security establishment. There was likely a strategic logic to puff out the chest and inflate the rhetoric, but at some level, many Kurds may have believed their own propaganda.”