...that troops were still at Keating (and other remote locales) because a final decision on strategy/resources had not yet been made. The plan to depart those locations goes back a ways (iirc one year, at least), but the final "do it" button was never pushed. The reason for that has never been clearly stated, though a post-battle WaPo account says it was due to everything but indecisiveness.

KABUL, Oct. 4 -- U.S. commanders had been planning since late last year to abandon the small combat outpost in mountainous eastern Afghanistan where eight U.S. soldiers died Saturday in a fierce insurgent assault.

The pullout, part of a strategy of withdrawing from sparsely populated areas where the United States lacks the troops to expel Taliban forces and to support the local Afghan government, has been repeatedly delayed by a shortage of cargo helicopters, Afghan politics and military bureaucracy, U.S. military officials said.