The tide turned in Iraq when coalition forces got off the FOB, got outside the wire, lived in small outposts and started walking through villages and neighborhoods instead of driving around in humvees.

That lesson has yet to make its way to Afghanistan :

"Yes. I believe the problem in Afghanistan isn't necessarily a quantitative manpower problem but rather a manpower distribution problem. We have between 60,000 and 70,000 international troops in Afghanistan presently and the vast majority of these spend their time in the FOBs [forward operating bases]. We have at least 10,000 soldiers, airmen, Marines and the like in Bagram for example, which is at least 150 miles away from the insurgency. And Bagram has a Pizza Hut, a Burger King and even a massage parlor. But it's not the way to win a counterinsurgency. You have to be out in the villages … When I was in Solerno last year, which is a FOB near the Pakistani-Afghan border near Khost, I estimated—and nobody really argued with me—that while there were thousands of people at this base, probably less than 5 percent ever left the wire. And you just can't prosecute a counterinsurgency with those kinds of numbers."

The scenario above sounds exactly like Iraq 2005.  And we all know how well that strategy worked.

Counter insurgency is not all that complex.  Get outside the wire, build a small outpost in a village, conduct a census, patrol 24/7.

I've even got an instructional DVD on it.

And as for the reporters question about, "If you have smaller numbers of troops in compounds throughout the country, how do you protect them? How do you make sure their bases don't get overrun by the Taliban?"

I've got a DVD about that as well. 

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