I've meant to post a couple of times this week but Civilization V is destroying my free time. Stupid addicting game. If I had a dedicated desk and computer at work I would blog from there (hooray for wasting taxpayer money!) but for the time being I can only jump on a computer when our division NCOIC is away. Some of you may be thinking that I should just take over the NCOIC's desk since I outrank him, but I'd much rather him have the desk since he actually does work.
So anyway, check out this blog post from Tom Ricks. It's a discussion from a correspondent in Afghanistan about a village wiped out after the Taliban had taken it over and U.S. forces determined they just couldn't allow that. Look at those before and after pictures...wow. We basically destroyed a village in order to save it.
A few wars ago, or even a few years ago, the commanders on the ground would have likely said something along the lines of "well that sucks for the people but the enemy was there, so too bad." This time the battalion on the ground did the absolute correct thing and worked to begin rebuilding the entire village. They even went about it the right way; instead of just throwing money at the villagers and calling it mission complete they worked with the local government, contractors, and the villagers themselves to rebuild the village. The battalion even put in the extra effort to get deeds to the land for the villagers.
Hopefully this turns into a success story.
No comments:
Post a Comment