Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
And even if you somehow managed to deter each and every attack by strength (or turn it into a hopeless action), you would still not come much closer to mission accomplishment.
The enemy could turn his attention on the ANA.

Better ANA ... attack on ANP ... better ANP ... larger concentration ... larger ANP ... attacks on civilian authorities ....
Fuchs, I love the idea but you didn't take it far enough. Attacks on civilian authorities...leads to alienation of the local population...alienation leads to spontaneous uprising called Sunni Awakening...Awakening leads to better intelligence...better intelligence leads to much more effective search and destroy missions...government establishes a strong foothold.

Now in Afghanistan, it obviously wouldn't be a Sunni Awakening, it would be something else. But right now, the Taliban and their ilk don't have to threaten the local populations to live off of them. They get to do so willingly. Now, if they had to attack local populations with force to survive, the population would be driven into our hands.


As to the attack at FOB Keating compared to the luxury life at BAF. Don't just look at the numbers, look at the amount of ordinance dropped. Something like 1 percent of all ordinance expended in Afghanistan occurs around BAF. Basically, when historians write the history about failure in Afghanistan it will be a history of greed, gluttony and sloth by upper leadership (division level and up).