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2009-10-07 Afghanistan
U.S. Afghanistan Base: Death Trap From The Beginning
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Posted by Free Radical 2009-10-07 07:32|| || Front Page|| [11139 views ]  Top

#1 .. foreign troops will ALWAYS sour the local population.

Anyone who's lived in several military communities could testify of the love/hate relationship even in their own neighborhood, be it peacetime or war.

It's embedded in the culture. Just check any news report about a "soldier from..." committing a crime, but you never hear about a "employee from..." committing a crime from the same area.
Posted by Procopius2k 2009-10-07 09:19||   2009-10-07 09:19|| Front Page Top

#2 Judging from the pictures of Camp Keating, its purpose is not force projection, but area denial of an enemy supply route. While the valley they were located in could be traversed in an hour on foot, if forced up onto the steep hillsides surrounding it, even with a light load, it would still take a day or two. It would be very difficult to cross under any means with a heavy load.

This strongly inhibited enemy operations, which is shown by their willingness to commit a major element to attacking that base.
Posted by Anonymoose 2009-10-07 09:21||   2009-10-07 09:21|| Front Page Top

#3 High ground good, low ground bad. Always has been. Always will be.
Posted by Besoeker in Duitsland 2009-10-07 09:59||   2009-10-07 09:59|| Front Page Top

#4 Too true, Besoeker. I wonder why we haven't swamped the area with multiple mountaintop ranger stations? Sure seems like an enemy collection point, which is a rare and beneficial feature in irregular warfare.

If nothing else, couldn't we flood the airspace with UAVs and let the joystick crowd have at it?
Posted by Halliburton - Mysterious Conspiracy Division 2009-10-07 10:22||   2009-10-07 10:22|| Front Page Top

#5 And the broken process (and those who took advantage of it) that somehow enabled this farce should also be made public and fixed.

These are American lives here. This kind of $hit is off-limits. Eight Americans died, a bunch of Afghans died, and however many were wounded. And the folks who caused these problems are probably more concerned with what they will be wearing to the office halloween party, if they are even aware of what they did.
Posted by gorb 2009-10-07 10:22||   2009-10-07 10:22|| Front Page Top

#6 Whoops, just read Anonymoose's comments. Still, if the base is vulnerable, fortify it until it isn't. Perhaps it would have helped to have another base nearby that could have made the lives of any insurgents who tried to position themselves to attack the base miserable.
Posted by gorb 2009-10-07 10:26||   2009-10-07 10:26|| Front Page Top

#7 Bernard Fall. "Hell in A Very Small Place".
Dien Bien Phu was surrounded by higher ground.
Viet Minh horsed artillery up there, somehow, along with enough ammo. SURprise.
If you want to deny a route, get into a watching position as high as you can get and call in fires.
Posted by Richard Aubrey">Richard Aubrey  2009-10-07 10:42||   2009-10-07 10:42|| Front Page Top

#8 Old Patriot addressed my related question(how can you safely operate a base where you don't control the high ground within attack range, especially in a 'weather-challenged' environment like A'stan?) Monday
(http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?
ID=280340&D=2009-10-05&SO=&HC=1)
"You quit playing games and start fighting a war. That means napalming the ridges when the 'insurgents' attack. That means using WP and flachette rounds to respond to attacks on areas you can't reach with rifle fire. That means ensuring you always have a couple of recoilless rifles assigned to one of these outposts that can "dust" ridgetops from within your compound. That means telling the "World Court" to go hang. You DON'T fight a war making your servicemembers wear boxing gloves and keep one foot in a gallon pail all the time. Of course, our "political leadership" is too "civilized" to do that, so we'll probably lose - just as we did in Vietnam.
control the high ground within attack range, especially in a 'weather-challenged' environment like A'stan?"
Posted by Glenmore 2009-10-07 11:13||   2009-10-07 11:13|| Front Page Top

#9 The tactical inadequacies of this place were reported long ago on the 'burg.
Posted by KBK 2009-10-07 12:19||   2009-10-07 12:19|| Front Page Top

#10 I'm no military genius, but...

The rules of engagement generally prevent U.S. forces from searching or attacking Afghan mosques.

These don't seem to be good ROEs. We had the same problem in Iraq until we developed a force of Iraqis who did go into the mosques and put an end to weapons stockpiling.

As insurgents fired from three or four different locations above the base, they also maneuvered and over took one of the observation posts on higher ground, taking out a post meant to protect Camp Keating from enemy fire.

Not occupying the high ground seems like a no-no and asking for trouble.

Not occupying an outpost except in force doesn't seem to be a good idea.

Having close air support, more troops at the ready, and artilliary seems like a must.

Underestimating our enemy's capability seems like a problem.

Not having good local intel seems like a problem.
Posted by JohnQC 2009-10-07 13:13||   2009-10-07 13:13|| Front Page Top

#11 When you have a place like this, you need to protect it. That means having some outliers on the high ground, capable of defending themselves and the base below. We have far too many people making military decisions that have never read Clausewitz, or learned the lessons of WWII, Korea, Vietnam, or even Iraq. As a result, people die.
Posted by Old Patriot">Old Patriot  2009-10-07 13:17|| http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/]">[http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/]  2009-10-07 13:17|| Front Page Top

#12 I saw the video this a.m. - one of the soldiers said they were there to be closer to the local populace...I'd imagine they could relocate to a better tactical position and still be close to the locals. Of course, I'm not on the ground there and wasn't on the OPT that set that camp where it's at.
Posted by Broadhead6 2009-10-07 13:59||   2009-10-07 13:59|| Front Page Top

#13 Anyone who's lived in several military communities could testify of the love/hate relationship even in their own neighborhood,

As an aside, not only military but any large intrusion of foreigners. We saw the same thing in the suburbs of Brussels, where a neighbor, herself a German national married to a Belgian, refused to socialize with us on the grounds that she had tired of befriending expats only to have them leave after a few years for an assignment elsewhere and never come back.
Posted by trailing wife 2009-10-07 22:28||   2009-10-07 22:28|| Front Page Top

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