Philip Smucker on the Shorthanded U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan

US soldiers in eastern Afghanistan in April 2009. Air strikes, gun battles and attacks killed 34 people across Afghanistan on Wednesday, including a government official shot dead with three of his sons near the Pakistani border, officials said. (AFP/File/Simon Lim)

Philip Smucker On The Shorthanded U.S. Strategy In Afghanistan -- Captain's Quarters

The incomparable Philip Smucker has given us a very stark look at the latest counterinsurgency struggle at a far flung outpost in Afghanistan.

The Taliban took shelter in the U.S.-built school they blew up last year before they began the 400-foot climb, rockets in hand, to the American bastion on the hill.

Wrapped in space blankets - thin foil sheets familiar to campers - to avoid detection by the thermal imaging cameras in the U.S. outpost, they zigzagged up the escarpment. Troops at the base said insurgents had come right up on the helicopter landing zone, fired their rockets, then disappeared “like ninjas into the night.”

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More News On Afghanistan's War

Fighting, Air Strikes, Bombings Kill 30 Across Afghanistan -- Voice of America
Attacks, strikes kill 34 in Afghanistan -- Yahoo news/AFP
Al Qaeda Shadow Army camps located in northern Helmand -- The Long War
FACTBOX-Security developments in Afghanistan, May 27 -- Reuters
Analysis: Fuelling the Afghan 'surge' -- UPI
Afghan plan would rely on innovative tactics, new rotations -- CNN
US military deaths in Afghanistan region at 615 -- AP