Teach us to sit still

"I'm not a big fan of the population-centric approach," says a Marine colonel in Afghanistan, as reported in the Washington Post. "We can't sit still. We have to pursue and chase these guys. I haven't seen any evidence [that the strategy of protecting the population is] working. The only thing that's working is chasing them."

Fascinating stuff. In Vietnam, the Marines pioneered the Combined Action Platoon, in which a handful of Americans and a larger number of Vietnamese worked together over the long haul to protect a community. Bing West memorably wrote about the project in The Village. I was so impressed by it that I used the experience in my concluding thesis at King's College London: Let the Americans Live in the Village, in which I apply the thinking of military theorist John Boyd to the problem of counterinsurgency. (The thesis is available only as an e-book for the Kindle reader, but you can read Kindle editions on your PC by downloading the free software.)

Meaning no disrespect to the colonel, but he ought to pick up a copy of T.S. Elliot's Ash Wednesday and ponder the lines: "Teach us to care and not to care / Teach us to sit still". They're especially appropriate right now, with Ash Wednesday falling on the 17th. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford