The tone in the article in the US military's Stars and Stripes is the familiar of the upbeat. General David Petraeus, the commander of US forces, addresses villagers in Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan:
“Afghanistan has a truly unique opportunity right now and may never have such an opportunity again,” he told them. “But without security, you’ll never be able to capitalize on that. You’ll never be able to exploit it.”
Before moving along, he turned to the farmer next to him. “Want to walk down the road with us?”
But there is a twist in the headline: "Petraeus Promises Villagers US Will Rebuild What It Has Knocked Down".
That's right: the people addressed by Petraeus about their "truly unique opportunity" are in the special position of having no village:
Tarok Kalacheh currently exists in name only. All its 33 buildings are gone, leveled by the U.S. military in October.
The destruction of the village was necessary to clear the Taliban from this lush farmland, which insurgents had rigged top to bottom with explosives, the military says. And now its reconstruction — and that of three others like it in the area — is just as necessary to keep the Taliban from coming back.
Apparently the locals were not thrilled with the initial phase of this plan:
Afterwards, the locals compared the Americans to the Soviets — just another occupying force.
“These dudes were extremely angry,” said Capt. Patrick McGuigan, the fire support officer for 1st Battalion, 320th Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division. “The elder (of Tarok Kalacheh) wouldn’t even talk to me for three weeks, he was that [angry].”
Do not fear, however, dear reader (and, presumably, dear villager). Irony is our side:
In a twist engineered by the counterinsurgency strategy, McGuigan, the man who had been calling “cleared hot” into the radio to give the jets the go-ahead to blow up the villages, is now in charge of rebuilding them.