U.S. troops killed as many as 30 insurgents after calling in air strikes to repel a Taliban attack on their outpost in southeast Afghanistan on Saturday, the NATO-led coalition said.
Five U.S. troops were wounded in the attack when the base in Paktika province came under fire from rocket-propelled grenades, gunfire and mortars, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and a regional army spokesman said.
Being defeated didn't interrupt the enemy press release:
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the Islamist group had attacked the base, claiming that six police outposts had been overrun in the assault.
Speaking by telephone from an undisclosed location, Mujahid said Taliban fighters had inflicted "high casualties" on ISAF and Afghan forces but gave no further details. He said eight Taliban fighters had been killed.
But even Reuters wasn't fooled:
The Taliban often make exaggerated or unconfirmed claims about such attacks.
I hope our home morale is strong enough to endure making a mistake and having the enemy overrun an outpost. Militarily, it wouldn't have much of an effect on an entire war effort.
But at home, if anti-war types who have already chosen to lose the war latch on to such a defeat as an excuse, it could be decisive. Our enemies know our weak point, of course, and hope that is exactly what they can achieve, no matter how many fighters they lose in failed attempts to overrun our well-defended outposts.
Choose to win and nothing the enemy does will stop us.
UPDATE: Strategypage writes of the battle:
In a classic example of what the Taliban are increasingly running into, a Taliban attack on an American outpost in the southeast was driven off. At least eighty of the several hundred attackers were killed, and many more wounded. It's unusual to leave that many dead bodies behind, indicating that a large portion of the force was killed or wounded, and unable to retrieve their dead. Moreover, many of the dead had been blown to pieces by smart bombs. The Taliban force had crossed from the nearby Pakistani border and quickly moved to attack the small outpost at night. But the U.S. and Afghan troops know this tactic and have been equipped and trained to cope. Only five of the defender were wounded and the base perimeter was not breached.
That kind of damage will hurt in the morning, let me tell you.
Of course, as long as the Taliban have a sanctuary in Pakistan where they can mass and then sally forth against a nearby American outpost, one day they'll breach that perimeter and do some real damage. We're good. But we're not perfect. On the bright side, even if the enemy gets that victory, to really exploit it they'll need Americans willing to trumpet it as a reason we are doomed and must retreat. That couldn't happen, right?
