There is an interesting article in today's New York Times about one of the first units to implement the new strategy.
It states the unit is familiar with the area they are starting to live in because they have spent some time patrolling the same neighborhood in vehicles and then returning to a remote base. Now they don't leave the "hood".
It seems a pretty important and fundemental change to me when our forces implement one of the very basic "counterinsurgency best practices"; namely, staying in the neighborhood overnight, every night.
I was very surprised to hear that we had not been doing that over the past summer and fall. I guess I just wasn't paying attention.
No wonder the level of violence did not go down. The bad guys just waited until we drove by and then slit another throat.
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