Cannoneer #4, Why so hostile? Has Cannoneer # 3 been on your arse about something?
Back OT, do you have a better suggestion?
Back in the day, Wayyyy before your momma bagged and tagged your poppa, a Combat OP was a heavy OP. An OP would have 2 or 3 guys while a Combat OP would have a LMG section and a fire team. Of couse, doctrine should have changed over the last 3 decades. In war, one adapts or one dies. Tactically, an OP provides warning, with hte grunts manning it expected to fall back to the MLR ( if they still call it that) when they spot someone hostile coming. A Combat Op was used when there was more line to hold then troops to hold it. a Combat OP was expected slow up the hostiles long enough for the moblie reserve to get there. COPs were used when there is no MLR because of force to space ratios and a mobile defense was required.
I based my OPINION on the map and the US Army’s long history of Incompetent Officers.
Tactics (a little) and doctrine (a lot) may change but the US Army produces incompetent Officers by intent. The System is designed to produce a jr. Officer with the balls to lead a charge. It does that. The American body politics fears Competent Generals MORE then it fears defeat in war. So the entire Officer system is designed to weed out those generals that have the genius to become a tyrant and overthrow the US Government. So what you get are a LOT of officers that follow the book and punch their ticket until they get that flag.
That is OK, since the US Military has a very competent NCO corps and the tradition of using it. American style warfare is based on Strategic maneuver and attrition. The NCO’s take care of the tactics. The US doesn’t do very well at the operational level since that is where the military genius that Politicians fear becomes so important.
My favorite example of that is the air campaign against Saddam’s Iraq. On a tactical level, the US/UK forces were able to destroy SAM sites at will and completely control the airspace over Iraq. Our strategy was to remove Saddam. Nobody was every able to make the operational connection between our overwhelming tactical dominance of Iraq air space and our strategic goal of removing Saddam.

Enough. The facts are the US Army took a mild beating. From the Stars and Stripes article;
“The militants showered the small base – which had been established just three days earlier – with machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortar shells, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to release the information.

Some of the militants breached the wall and got inside, killing nine American soldiers and wounding 15 others, he said.”
24 casualties out of how many?
On the stragic level, some US Commanders are getting the idea;
“A Western official with detailed knowledge of the area said the raid underlined questions about the military campaign against the Taliban.

There is “overwhelming evidence that anti-coalition elements are operating effectively and that our counterinsurgency strategy is not successful … because it has not addressed the most basic need to bring security to the people and devised a means to separate the people from the enemy,” said the official, who agreed to discuss the sensitive issue only if not quoted by name.”

So what we have here is “surge” tactics being applied to Afghanistan, which might or might not be the proper tactics for Afghanistan.
The ‘Surge’ itself is a modern adaptation of the thousands of years old tactics used by the Romans. Also called the “OIL spot” by the French and ‘Ink Blot’ by the Brits. General Crook used it very well against the American Indians post Civil War. As a tactic it worked best against a large but divided enemy.
I think a clear and hold ‘cordon sanitaire’ approach will work better in the ‘gan. Build roads and put heavy protection on the road building zones. Let the rest of the country burn. As the roads expand, so will the protection and civilized life. The Romans invented this tactic also. They used it in combination with the OIL spot. The Cordon approach takes a LOOOONG time. Not sure if the politicians would be able to provide the cover to get that done.
I don’t think the American body politic is ready for a war that will last longer then America has been a nation.

URL to Stars and Stripes article, which is an AP feed for fair use purposes;

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AFGHANISTAN?SITE=DCSAS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-07-14-15-38-17

I tried to quote just the S&S parts and avoid the AP quotes for legal reasons. S&S didn’t do a very good job of delineating where AP left off and they began.