"Hearts and Minds" has always been a name, a label, a code applied in these kinds of small wars to ostensibly describe what folks wanted other folks to think were actually happening on the ground, and afterwards, what they wanted others to think did happen.

The British in Malaya broke the back of the communist insurgency there not between 1952-1954 under the hearts and minds campaign of Templer, but with the use of brute military force combined with Briggs's resettlement program between 1949-1951. Once the insurgency's back was broken, Templer in charge was able to use persuasion of hearts and minds to further things along. This explanation is real and is truthful and has been put forward by a number of leading British scholars over the past few years, most recently in a special issue of the Journal of Strategic Studies that challenges the Malaya Coin Paradigm.

Moreover, one can see the same thing being done by such high priests of population centric Coin like Gallieni and Lyautey in Madagascar and Morocco respectively. Lyautey especially would use the language of "peaceful penetration," of progressive development to better people's lives in order to soothe domestic tensions in France over imperial action and internal issues with the French Army. But again, these hearts and minds techniques were ostensible; actually Lyautey crushed resistance in Morocco by the more time honored process used by the French Army in that region: the Razzia. Historian Doug Porch's excellent campaign study of Lyautey in Morocco shows this to be the case.

Wilf is right, war is war, it is not "armed social science," and real war, not happy war sold through clever-speak of "hearts and minds" language involves killing and death. And in actuality the historical models that we use to prop up this ostensible notion of "hearts and minds" were won through killing and destruction that broke the back of the resistance.

It is time to get a clear view of what we think we are trying to do in places like Astan.