Can U.S. Troops Run McChrystal's 'Soft Power' Playbook? - Noah Shachtman, Danger Room.
... For commanders fighting in some of Afghanistan's most hotly-contested areas, the struggle has been even more intense. How much restraint do you show, before you jeopardize your troops? How do you protect the population, if the Taliban have the freedom to roam and attack at will? When is it time to go "kinetic," and drop the softer approach? There are no easy answers, as I saw this summer with Echo company of the 2/8 Marines. Captain Eric Meador, the company's commander, wanted to spend more time holding shuras and swaying village elders to his cause. But there were too many Taliban in the vicinity, he felt, to allow those peaceful talks to take place. So instead, he sent the majority of his marines out on patrols that were almost certain to turn into firefights. "I call it the eye gouge," Meador told me. "To keep the good areas here relatively calm, you have to go to the enemy and punch him in the chest, punch him in the face."
The conundrum has become even more perplexing in Afghanistan's Arghandab river valley. One battalion of the 5th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division has been locked in a vicious struggle there that's not only killed 21 U.S. soldiers and more than 50 insurgents in just a few months, Army Times' Sean Naylor reports. "It's led to a popular company commander's controversial replacement and... caused the soldiers at the tip of the spear... to accuse their battalion and brigade commanders of not following the guidance of senior coalition commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal to adopt a 'population-centric' counterinsurgency approach." ...
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