You sometimes get the horn.

Hint for the Taliban. If the ratio isn't better than 8:1, you may want to consider retreat as first option:

In the city of Shewan, approximately 250 insurgents ambushed 30 Marines and paid a heavy price for it.

Shewan has historically been a safe haven for insurgents, who used to plan and stage attacks against Coalition Forces in the Bala Baluk district.

The city is home to several major insurgent leaders. Reports indicate that more than 250 full time fighters reside in the city and in the surrounding villages.

So when a Marine platoon wandered by, they thought they'd show off a little. Big mistake:

After calling for close-air support, the small group of Marines pushed forward and broke the enemies' spirit as many of them dropped their weapons and fled the battlefield. At the end of the battle, the Marines had reduced an enemy stronghold, killed more than 50 insurgents and wounded several more.

"I didn't realize how many bad guys there were until we had broken through the enemies' lines and forced them to retreat. It was roughly 250 insurgents against 30 of us," the corporal said. "It was a good day for the Marine Corps. We killed a lot of bad guys, and none of our guys were seriously injured."

The "designated marksman", aka sniper, did almost half the damage:

During the battle, the designated marksman single handedly thwarted a company-sized enemy RPG and machinegun ambush by reportedly killing 20 enemy fighters with his devastatingly accurate precision fire.

While this is going to be a long war because of the tremendous amount of work to be done to get the necessary level of governance in place and functioning, not to mention the difficulty of protecting the population while the Afghan army is built from the ground up, it is probably safe to assume the Taliban are beginning to figure out that they're not fighting dispirited conscript Russians this go-round.

"The biggest thing to take from that day is what Marines can accomplish when they're given the opportunity to fight," the sniper said. "A small group of Marines met a numerically superior force and embarrassed them in their own backyard. The insurgents told the townspeople that they were stronger than the Americans, and that day we showed them they were wrong."

On this day, bragging rights went to the Marines, 50 to 0.

[Crossposted at QandO]