Taking the war to Marineistan

The WaPo has an article that would have gladdened the heart of John Boyd, the advocate of offensive counter-guerrilla ops:

The Marines are pushing into previously ignored Taliban enclaves. They have set up a first-of-its-kind school to train police officers. They have brought in a Muslim chaplain to pray with local mullahs and deployed teams of female Marines to reach out to Afghan women.

The Marine approach -- creative, aggressive and, at times, unorthodox -- has won many admirers within the military. The Marine emphasis on patrolling by foot and interacting with the population, which has helped to turn former insurgent strongholds along the Helmand River valley into reasonably stable communities with thriving bazaars and functioning schools, is hailed as a model of how U.S. forces should implement counterinsurgency strategy.

It all sounds wonderfully reminiscent of the Combined Action Platoons that the Marines so successfully applied in Vietnam--except for one thing. The WaPo article notes that they're building a 3,000-man 'outpost' with 'two airstrips, an advanced combat hospital, a post office, a large convenience store and rows of housing trailers stretching as far as the eye can see'. The Vietnam-era CAP contained twelve Marines, augmented by triple their number of local police and militia, and they lived in The Village for months at a time. They took casualties, but they were never overrun, though the Viet Cong tried repeatedly to run them off. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford