It's being called the first "large scale test" of our new counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan and it involves about 4,000 Marines who will spread out over the valley and set up camp in the small villages and towns that dot the countryside. The focus of the mission will be to protect the villagers from the Taliban while trying to restore government services according to this piece by Rajiv Chandrasekaran in the Washington Post: "We're doing this very differently," Nicholson said to his senior officers a few hours before the mission began. "We're going to be with the people. We're not going to drive to work. We're going to walk to work." Similar approaches have been tried in the eastern part of the country, but none has had the scope of the mission in Helmand, a vast province that is largely an arid moonscape save for a band of fertile land that lines the Helmand River. Poppies grown in that territory produce half the world's supply of opium and...(Read Full Post)