Quote Originally Posted by Kiwigrunt View Post
Good point.
To what extent does this ‘difficulty in our culture’ allow us to only see every incident that leaves casualties on our side as a defeat or disaster, exacerbated of course by our very aversion to risk and casualties. At the tactical level, was COP Keating really that much of a defeat? Sure, 8 KIA is tragic. But the comparative statistics don’t actually look that bad given that the Taliban lost about 150. And as for the loss of the post it depends on how much value we choose to adhere to that particular piece of turf. I realise that this is looking purely at numbers but compare it to other defeats like those caused by IEDs. Look at any IED incident or combination of them where the casualty count is similar and see what damage we were able to inflict in return. (I say ‘we’ in the broadest sense; it doesn’t include yours truly from behind my laptop)

So perhaps we could even take that a step further and reverse our view on this. Given that the enemy tends to have the initiative most of the time anyway, would an increased use of these COPs not be a way to draw them out and meet them head on? And then the ‘true believers’ can do the humping with heavy weights. And when they operate in larger groups like this they should in a sense be easier to deal with as the battle becomes more ‘conventional’.
With other words, give them bait and reason to group up and take the battle to us.

Just some simplistic thoughts…
Might work...for a short while and through a few successes, but then what? I don't think the Taliban are going to continue to push a protracted strategy of trying to isolate a COP and destroy it at the risk of losing several fighters. They'd rather choke off our lines of communication and just IED the re-supply convoys.

This also sounds like the strategy employed with regard to defending Khe Sanh:

"As far as Westmoreland was concerned, however, all he needed to know was that PAVN had massed large numbers of troops for a set-piece battle. Making the prospect even more enticing was that the Combat Base was in an unpopulated area where American firepower could be fully brought to bear without having to worry about civilian casualties. The opportunity to engage and destroy a formerly elusive enemy that was moving toward a fixed position promised a victory of unprecedented proportions."

I'm not so sure that a mobile and fluid enemy such as the Taliban is too concerned with waging a war of COPs.