Generalization

Times (UK) on Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, our new man in Baghdad.

General Petraeus, who has spent 2½ of the past 4 years in Iraq, has been one of the few officers advocating a troop surge into Baghdad. He believes that a new approach, based on soldiers living and patrolling amid the population and co-opting local leaders, can halt the slide into chaos.
Having co-authored the US military’s counter-insurgency manual, General Petraeus believes that only by combining military strength and sensitive interaction with locals can an insurgency be defeated. He has been influenced by a study of the British in Malaya during the 1950s by John Nagl, a Pentagon official.

Maybe the Times just likes him because if he succeeds they can say it was British intelligence that won the war, but the article makes his methods sound promising -- very like the community policing tactics that have proven successful here in gangland neighborhoods.