Posted on 09/05/2011 4:14:30 PM PDT by robowombat
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On the Afghan border with Pakistan in Paktika province, there is a tiny, isolated and primitive American outpost called Combat Outpost Margah. What happened there last fall never penetrated mainstream consciousness, but on Oct. 30, American forces were surprised in a wee-hours attack by hundreds of unusually sophisticated fighters who were "armed to the teeth and shouting "Allah Akbar." Or so David Axe reported, quite vividly, in Wired magazine, a lone outlet to cover the battle.
It took 12 apocalyptic hours, but the insurgents were successfully repelled. Of course, this wasn't the first time this outpost in eastern Afghanistan or its defenders were attacked. But on that October night, "one of the biggest localized fights" of the decade-long Afghanistan war took place, and no one noticed, not even after Gen. David Petraeus called the outpost's battle to save itself from being overrun "one for the history books."
Maybe the omission is connected to the fact that Petraeus didn't also speak of the great national purpose these valorous soldiers had just risked life and limb for. And maybe that omission is connected to the fact that there wasn't any. There weren't any American deaths at the Battle of Margah, either, and maybe that fact, for the military, is part of what makes it so memorable.
This wasn't the case at COP Keating in October 2009, when 300 Taliban fighters breached a similarly tiny and isolated outpost, also in eastern Afghanistan near Kamdesh. In that earlier battle, eight Americans were killed.
The year before that, in July 2008, nine Americans were killed at COP Wanat, ....... Such casualties are the unreckoned costs of counterinsurgency, and the top COINdinistas who inserted these mini U.S. outposts like pins in a map deep in hostile territory have never had to answer for them.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
Wow, attacking a COP with fortifications and pre-planned lines of fire is no easy task.
We should remove our brave troups immediately, destroy the enemy and let Satan sort them out.
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