Michael Smith: It depends on what your area and mission is. You set up different goals for what you want to do.

I may want to go to a certain village where we promised the kids a soccer ball and take them a soccer ball. Then we might go to the next village and try and find a certain person whose name is on a list of potential members of the Taliban or similar Taliban-affiliated groups. We might go to a gap in the mountain where we know traffic is funneled through and set up a checkpoint to see if there are guns going through. We might do something with local police. We might bring school supplies to a local village. We might just do village assessments because it's a place we haven't been before. It runs the gamut.

All the time.

Let me preface by explaining that "IED" stands for "improvised explosive device." They exist because the locals won't shoot at us because we have pretty big guns. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and left in 1989. Since then, everyone has forgotten how to aim. Looking at it from a risk perspective for them, it's too high a risk to shoot at us because we have the better guns. If they decide we are going to shoot at each other, we are obviously going to win.