Reporting from Afghanistan

The Marines moved out on patrol this morning just after sunrise, moving on foot into the village of Sangin Khan, about two kilometers to the west. It's a medium-sized hamlet of about a 100 interconnected mud-walled compounds, surrounded by miles of dark-green fields, most of which are currently planted in corn.

Later this year the corn will be harvested and poppies will be put in. Heroin is still a large part of this economy, even though the price of corn would probably be even more profitable at the moment - if there were any way to get it from here to the global market. There isn't. In a province roughly the size of Indiana without a single paved road, the economy is about as insular as it gets.

I walked with the Marines along canals put in by USAID in the 1950s - a project which carved out this fertile slice of land from the desert.

Farmers were already out tending their fields before the sun moved too high in the sky - the temperature eventually soared to over 110 degrees.

The purpose of this patrol was to continue an ongoing census of the area - an attempt to map the human terrain and get a feel for who is who. We passed a large cemetery just outside the village - the heaps of stones made it easy to see that many of the grave sites contained children - and colored flags decorating other markers showed men who had died as "martyrs."

The people would clearly like nothing better than to just be left alone - but they understand the necessity of what the Marines are doing, and so willingly oblige when they are asked for information about their jobs and families.

Watching the Marines interact with the villagers - shaking hands with the men and handing out MRE powerbars to throngs of gleeful kids - made me realize that there's a lot more going on here. These children will grow up with the image of the American military man handing out goodies with a smile on his face.

He presents a strong, but compassionate figure that likely makes every young boy secretly wish to grow up to be a Marine. And when they do grow up, they likely won't have the inherent suspicion that their parents hold - who themselves were children and remember the tactics of the Soviet army - who reportedly used to put out teddy bears that would explode and maim children.

Evil tactics like that have never prevailed, and never will. And though the challenges facing Afghanistan are pervasive and thorny - Americans can hope because Americans BRING hope - and that kind of compassion will eventually prevail.