Interestingly, as Petraeus pushes his talk/shoot offensive, we’re hearing less about the counterinsurgency strategy that supposedly was his great contribution to military doctrine. Though Petraeus helped write the doctrine in 2006 while he was on a stateside tour as commander at Fort Leavenworth, it is a more basic approach than the wily strategy he has actually used both in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Take the central counterinsurgency precept of “protect the population.” Petraeus and his deputies are still pushing this “population-centric” approach in Kandahar and Helmand provinces, although senior military officials say it has had only limited success so far.

But the real action has been “enemy-centric” — in stepped-up operations to capture or kill Taliban leaders, along with support for Karzai’s attempt to cut a political deal with them. President Obama, having signed off in December on the counterinsurgency approach, is now watching his commander execute a strategy whose biggest successes have come from hard-nosed counterterrorist tactics — the midnight raid, kick-down-the-door ferocity of the Joint Special Operations Command.