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George Packer gets inside Dave Kilcullen's head

Check out George's email interview with DK.  Our favorite Aussie concludes:

The situation in Afghanistan is dire. But the war is winnable. We need to focus our attention on the problem, and think before acting. But we need to think fast, and our actions need to involve a major change of direction, focussing on securing the population rather than chasing the enemy, and delivering effective legitimate governance to the people, bottom-up, at the local level. Do that, do it fast, and we stand an excellent chance of turning things around.

There's a lot more red meat in the actual interview (which is rather less optimistic than the above excerpt suggests).  Charlie is intrigued by his idea of a counter-sanctuary strategy...

PS Our more responsible cousins over at SWJ note that Dave will be on Fareed Zakaria's new show on CNN on Sunday (1pm ET).

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