general petreus assumes the stance in afghanistan

bagram, air force hangar --- small meeting of high ranked soldiers in afghanistan and
visiting u.s. dignitaries including joe biden and media....

general petreus: hi everyone -- how was the ice scream, (laughs to no response from audience which leads to awkward silence)

the blonde newsreader from abc news; (in an aside to her producer) just edit that bit out

petreus: ladies and gentlemen, soldiers of 1st battalion..... many of you are west point graduates and you would recall your training at times from west point including the battles of alexander the great...... today we face a hostile populace with ever-shifting alliances that we are caught out in a nine-year long peacekeeping mission.... we find ourselves forced to pay extortion money to taliban heavies....... our hands are tied in terms of causing collateral damage hence we cannot merely carpet bomb our enemies as women and children would die........... meanwhile we work in a mountainous economy worth 3 billion dollars a year based solely on the opium poppy which is moved north to russia or south to pakistan for export........ we realize that this land's true economic potential lies, in the future we would imagine, in mining and exploiting precious metals found here...... however we face a population that knows nothing of mining and everything of a heroin-export business...............

nine years people -- i ask you: what would alexander the great do at this point?

(fiddles with remote control to lower screen down) --- i ask you to watch the following excerpt from a movie called 'the three amigos' from the 1980s --- i call the excerpt 'my little buttercup'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Mw9F5zawRQ

please watch...... (afterwards)

(petreus continues) -- okay, you've seen the excerpt -- i want you to remember your west point training and think back to the times of alexander --- of course the nearest thing to an engine in those days was horse or elephant driven, but recall that alexander fought on many different terrains, including afghanistan........ what do you see in the 'my little buttercup' excerpt that reminds you of the challenges we currently face?

major tomlinson, tank unit master-sergeant: sir, i serve in a tank-unit, i would say that we don't get to use our tanks enough as we are facing an insurgency based and protected by a delicate civilian population which we do not wish to annihilate, sir i would say that the hostile mexicans in the movie clip correspond to the taliban and population in general

petreus: excellent observation tomlinson, the local populace is hostile to us, let's not kid ourselves.... just like in the video clip it's hard to tell who is active in el guapo's army and who is just an un-assuming citizen not directly enmeshed in military and violent ventures......... what else do you see?

corporal brooks - bravo company: sir these men are singing about their sweethearts, many of us are far from our sweethearts

petreus: that is true, but in alexander's day they marched on india via afghanistan and they had no jet planes to return to and spend a couple of weeks with their sweethearts

corporal brooks (looks around bashfully)--- sir, yessir