Good guys of LOTR clueless?

[the phantom]

That does not sound terribly incompetent to me.

I don't think I ever said they were "incompetent".

I'm talking more along the lines of incapable, though when I looked up incompetent in the thesaurus a couple of the synonyms seemed applicable. The synonyms listed under ineffectual seem to work well (eg unsuccessful and inadequate) so perhaps that is a better word to use.

making the good guys losers no matter what

but not that that fact makes them "losers", not in the sense which is mostly attached to that word.

If other people choose to attach a "sense" to the word losers then they can if they want, but I'm not. I meant losers exactly how it is said in the context of my argument, which was that the good guys were on the losing side of a conflict.