Dexter Filkins, New York Times, yesterday from Afghanistan:
And then, almost invariably, they [US and NATO troops] have cleared out, never leaving behind enough soldiers or police officers to hold the place on their own.
And so, almost always, the Taliban returned — and, after a time, so did the American and NATO troops, to clear the place all over again.
“Mowing the grass,” the soldiers and Marines derisively call it.
Ethan Bronner, New York Times, November 2009:
“Last night we carried out between 15 and 20 actions,” a top Israeli commander said of the West Bank raids, in a recent interview under military rules of anonymity. “That was a fairly typical night. It’s like throwing a blanket on a fire. If we stop for a minute, we will go backwards very quickly. We call it cutting the grass.”
…a deal is brewing that could free perhaps 1,000 Palestinian fighters, some of them planners of suicide bombings. In the Israeli military’s words, that would be a lot of new grass to cut.
Thanks to Ahmed Moor, who spotted this one.
