The present-day U.S. military qualifies by any measure as highly professional, much more so than its Cold War predecessor. Yet the purpose of today’s professionals is not to preserve peace but to fight unending wars in distant places. Intoxicated by a post-Cold War belief in its own omnipotence, the United States allowed itself to be drawn into a long series of armed conflicts, almost all of them yielding unintended consequences and imposing greater than anticipated costs. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. forces have destroyed many targets and killed many people. Only rarely, however, have they succeeded in accomplishing their assigned political purposes. . . . [F]rom our present vantage point, it becomes apparent that the “Revolution of ‘89” did not initiate a new era of history. At most, the events of that year fostered various unhelpful illusions that impeded our capacity to recognize and respond to the forces of change that actually matter.

Andrew Bacevich


Saturday, September 11, 2010

War News for Saturday, September 11, 2010

The British MoD is reporting the death of a British ISAF soldier at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, U.K. on Friday, September 10th. He was wounded in a small arms fire attack/gunshot wounds in the Nahr-e Saraj District, Helmand Province, Afghanistan on Monday, August 23rd.


Grenades alter troops' attitude, mission

Contractor with Valley ties killed in Afghanistan


Reported security incidents

Samarra:
#1: Three policemen were wounded in attacks with two improvised explosive devices in eastern and central Samarra city on Saturday, a local police source in Salah al-Din province said. “An IED went off near a police patrol in the neighborhood of al-Shohadaa, central Samarram leaving two patrolmen wounded,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.

#2: “In a separate incident, an IED went off near a police patrol in Malwiyet Samarra area, in the eastern part of the city, leaving one policeman wounded,” he added.


Tikrit:
#1: A sticky bomb attached to the car of a high ranking officer cut off part of his legs when it exploded in central Tikrit, 150 km (95 miles) north of Baghdad, police said



Afghanistan: "The Forgotten War"
#1: At least 20 Islamist militants and one border guard were killed earlier this week in a firefight along the volatile border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan, Tajik officials said on Saturday. The clash was the latest unrest amid increasing violence in Tajikistan in recent weeks, following a prison break which freed 25 Al Qaeda-linked militants and a suicide car bombing which killed two police. Tajik officials said that the slain fighters, who included members of the Taliban, were trying to slip over the border from Afghanistan into Tajikistan when they were discovered by the Tajik border guards. "These Afghan anti-government fighters were hiding on an island in the river Pyandzh," which forms the border between the two states, border guard spokesman Colonel Khushnud Rakhmatullayev told AFP. "There was a clash with small arms fire which lasted nearly 24 hours. As a result, 20 militants, most of the militant group, were killed.... One border ensign was also killed," he added. He said that the clash started on Wednesday and lasted until the early hours of Thursday morning. The spokesman's statement was the first report to have emerged about the firefight.

#2: Shells fired by coalition forces in Afghanistan on Friday killed at least three people across the border in a northwestern tribal area of Pakistan, officials said. They said a gun battle had erupted between troops and the Taliban in Khost, and mortar shells hit houses in Saidgi village, in Pakistan’s North Waziristan. “Three people were killed and five others were wounded by mortar shells fired by coalition forces from the Afghanistan side during a gunfight with the Taliban,” a local security official told AFP.


DoD: 1st Lt. Todd W. Weaver

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