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Battle At "The Outpost" COP Keating
Published 3 years ago
Unconfirmed footage reportedly shows a short segment from a November 2008 battle at Combat Outpost (COP) Keating, in which ISAF troops attempt to defend the stupidly-placed position from an enemy that holds the high ground on all sides.
A year later COP Keating would be the location for the fateful October 2009 Battle of Kamdesh for which the film "The Outpost" was produced. It was a disaster waiting to happen. Everyone knew it, but those fighting there could only do their best within the situation they were given. Senior leadership ignored multiple warnings over several deployments.
The embedded footage shows US troops looking almost straight up toward the enemy as hostile fire and tracer rounds pour in. This negligently-placed fighting position wasn't unique to this location. All across mountainous eastern Afghanistan, combat outpost positions were chosen for their ease of resupply by ground vehicles rather than their potential survivability. Their locations selected by a high-ranking officer looking at a map with his feet up on a desk in an air-conditioned office on a far away major airbase who may as well have been back stateside for how relevant he was to the fight.
The deadly incompetence of senior US military leadership demonstrated at the disastrous Kabul evacuation was nothing new. US troops have been subjected to this kind of poor decision-making since the beginning of GWOT. When officers are promoted based on their ability to kiss ass rather than kill the enemy, it is our warriors that pay the price.
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