Well, I guess when it comes to nation building there's nothing like a few thouand troops, after all:
Thousands of U.S. Marines descended upon the volatile Helmand River valley in helicopters and armored convoys early Thursday morning, mounting an operation that represents the first large-scale test of the U.S. military's new counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan.
It looks like the nut of the operation is this:
The U.S. strategy here is predicated on the belief that a majority of people in Helmand do not favor the Taliban, which enforces a strict brand of Islam that includes an eye-for-an-eye justice and strict limits on personal behavior. Instead, U.S. officials believe, residents would rather have the Afghan government in control, but they have been cowed into supporting the Taliban because there was nobody to protect them.
Obviously time will tell whether or not that "belief" is a valid one. The one thing that's clear tonight is this: The operation in Afghanistan is exactly what the Washington Post calls it: Obama's War.
Comment removed.
Good point, jwad. Obama, the Taliban. Same, same. No paranoid delusions there. Not a bit.— Talking point sleuth
I am sure that the ground situation is complicated. If the Taliban consists of outsiders coming into the province, where are they coming from? From here it looks more like the Taliban and the other inhabitants are all just part of the same tribes and, when they are home instead of on patrol, the Taliban are part of the village folk. BUT if the Taliban is actively recruiting their fellow tribesmen, sometimes at gunpoint, then we should get the non-Taliban villagers on our side. Perhaps one of the main problems is that there is so little actual reporting being done from Helmand Province--Richard Engel on NBC seems to be about it. So those of us at home have not enough information at this point to know of the new strategy is likely to work.
Will Bunch, a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News, blogs about his obsessions, including national and local politics and world affairs, the media, pop music, the Philadelphia Phillies, soccer and other sports, not necessarily in that order.
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