"Special Forces And A Story of Two Hills: A Cautionary Tale" - What is your take on this?

Village Stability Operations is not for personnel who don't want to engage.
It is the military equivalent of a cop walking the beat. Get to know who's who in the neighborhood and you notice things that seem off. People tell you things because they have become accustomed to your presence, and view you as part of the community.

This is a work of fiction, but I watched many conventional units at the tactical level make this mistake time and again. As it was my job to get in the weeds with the locals, their own lack of engagement caused them to miss opportunities when they arose. I can't count the number of times my observations and analysis was dismissed by combat arms guys that didn't "get it".
Someday we'll figure it out.

This fictional story can be applied to so many situations:
Conventional vs. unconventional thinking ...not forces. I saw plenty of "conventional" units thinking outside of the box. This can also be applied to risk aversion by commanders, group think by any unit, a lack of energy displayed by over-deployed units and over-deployed leaders, and failure by the majority of us to truly understand the cultures we were working among to list a few. The question now becomes after the Iraq and Afghanistan wars how will we address ISIS when the time comes? Will we deploy, set up FOBs all over, spend all of our time and money keeping an immense amount of infrastructure running, or will we actually learn from the past decade? Time will tell

I love to figure out the moral of the story when reading fables. Here's my take on this:

1. To make lasting friendships and build trust we have to be engaged with those around us.
2. Fear of failure or fear of losing what we have can cause us to miss opportunities.
3. Listen to the newb's. Sometimes they really do have good ideas.
4. Fortune can favor the bold.

These lessons are not limited to this scenario. They can be applied throughout our lives and endeavors.