Marines return to their base after visiting a village bazaar near Golestan. The base is among the most remote in the country, and the area is essentially peaceful.

And with an estimated 54,000 people scattered among more than 150 villages, the valley hardly qualifies as an important district under the counterinsurgency strategy laid out by U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal. But Marine commanders are wondering: Now that they have been committed to Golestan for the past two years, how can they just leave?

U.S. servicemembers at Osan Air Base in South Korea take photos of President Barack Obama, who has just finished his speech to an audience drawn from installations around the peninsula.

Obama drew repeated cheers and applause during a speech to U.S. troops there Thursday — except when he mentioned that some may deploy once again to a war zone.

In Delaram, Afghanistan, Marines usually conduct several foot patrols of the town each day to improve security and ensure residents that their job is to protect them.

Two years after the Marines first deployed to Delaram, a hardscrabble town in southwestern Afghanistan’s Nimruz province, a pervasive fear of the Taliban continues to underlie nearly every facet of life.

Waterfowl fly over the Imjin River in Korea's Demilitarized Zone. A number of groups and individuals are working to preserve as much of the DMZ's natural areas as possible in the event North and South Korea reunify in the years ahead.

The DMZ has become a nature preserve of sorts thanks to the fact that it has been left relatively untouched by man since the end of Korean War hostilities in 1953.

A bouquet of roses left by an unknown visitor leans against the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington D.C.

In the wake of last week's shootings at Fort Hood Army base in Texas, Mark Rodgers drove two hours Sunday to offer well wishes near the highway exit for Fort Hood's main gate. Cars honked as they drove by. Despite the drizzle and wind, the former soldier said he'd stay there as long as he could to encourage the soldiers and families.

Afghan villagers gather on one side of a stream to watch U.S. and Afghan forces, on the other side, take a long halt while patrolling in the Shah Joy district of southern Afghanistan's Zabul province. With NATO strategy in Afghanistan now focused on protecting civilians, rather than killing the Taliban, the task of international troops and their Afghan government allies is to figure out how to bridge the gap and earn the trust of villagers like these.

As the war drags into its ninth year, and as President Barack Obama contemplates sending thousands more troops, Americans are fighting alongside Afghan government forces more closely than ever. But it’s an uneasy alliance.

A French solider on patrol northeast of Kabul keeps watch over a village street.

After several years of enduring Americans’ scorn for sitting out the Iraq campaign, the French military is going toe-to-toe with the Taliban, shedding blood and proving a worthy partner in Afghanistan, U.S. officers say.