http://www.captainsjournal.com/2007/08/22/operation-alljah-and-the-marines-of-2nd-battalion-6th-regiment/

I would like to see some of those 130,000 troops sent to ‘Stan.

Also the terrain in Afghanistan is totally different than that of Iraq. As we speak, there is a troop presence in Iraq of at least 130,000 to be compared with barely 60,000 (roughly 90,000 if you count coalition troops) in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is also much larger and it has far more difficult terrain and weather (snow is particularly rare in Iraq). Naturally force-to-area saturation is another major difference in this case as well. In one way your mentioning at the end of a Marine talking on this is apt, the more troops you have around, the less likely the enemy is to remain and fight them. I guess my point is that DO is only as useful as their ability to stay alive in remote passes against ambushes of Taliban perhaps outnumbering them ten-to-one. I also understand that losing people is a fact of war, but losing them unnecessarily is that thing that quagmire campaigns are made of.

That’s very interesting that you mention a Marine returning from Fallujah in 2007, because that’s exactly when I returned from there as a Marine, myself. Specifically in mind I can recount to you as many as five instances where inserting Marines into the city (day or night) was nearly impossible to do so without being compromised after at most 12-24 hours. You take a house over and harden it up, you have to deal with the family and that means either detaining them or kicking them out. You kick the family out of their own house, they have to stay somewhere and they usually talk to their friends as to why they aren’t in their house. After some time, we purposefully inserted units into the city, not with the intent to actually interdict insurgent traffic, but many times it was simply done to pick a fight. Many of the firefights in the north and central part of the city, particularly around the al-Asqua Mosque, were particularly difficult to perform, my company alone lost four very good Marines within just a few blocks of that area.

But the main reason that the MC doesn’t normally do DO is because the Commandant has said so. It’s a tactical decision made way above the pay grade of COs. I suppose it has to do with the risk assocaited with DO, along with the notion that the idea behind deployment of MC units however large or small is force projection. This is an important concept in understanding DO. I don’t think one can understand why the Marines do what they do without understanding show of force.

I had asked one particular Marine upon return from Fallujah in 2007 if the population (and insurgents) wouldn’t see a squad delivering a Scout Sniper to a rooftop in the middle of the day, and then avoid that area because of the sniper. He responded, “So what? If you pacify an area because they know you’re there, haven’t you achieved your goal?”

The answer is yes, at least for the moment.

As per better helo support, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. If you can’t get rapid support out to the Marines or soldiers out in those passes then it really doesn’t matter how good they are, you’re going to lose some of them. Of course weather is another devil in the details. Basically you need both more robust air capabilities (especially with the use of drones to cover passes we can’t have a physical presence in). You could use a Hellfire missile in those passes if you can get what they call positive ID on exactly whom you’re shooting at. Of course Afghanistan is a much larger country, and that’s a lot more ground to cover. Obviously the hope is as assets come back from Iraq that they can brush the dust off of them and get them ready for Afghan ASAP.