Dancing with wolves in Afghanistan
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 at 6:18PM
ARTICLE: "To Woo Afghan Locals, U.S. Troops Settle In: Tactic Wins Friends, Isolates Insurgents, But Boost Casualties," by Michael M. Phillips, Wall Street Journal, 9 April 2007, p. A1.
The long lonely grind of counter-insurgency is pure SysAdmin.
How so?
You can't call this small-unit embedding with locals particularly Leviathan.
No, this building of virtual forts among settlers who've lived there for centuries is manpower-intensive and technology/firepower-light: "an intimate style of warfare."
The military rejoins society because society is what we're fighting over, not territory: the inevitability of the Leviathan's crushing firepower is replaced by the SysAdmin's persistence of will.
The Yanks aren't just coming over there. The Yanks are never leaving. We stay until you join the world.
It is lonely, dangerous duty, dancing with wolves. It does take you back ...
"Persistent presence," not "persistent raiding," says the profiled colonel. Our troops in these isolated, mini-forts never do anything "without asking the elders first," says a local cop, obviously impressed.
The SysAdmin's most important tactic is simply modeled behavior.
Reader Comments