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


Tuesday, January 10, 2012

War News for Tuesday, January 10, 2011

Why do we ignore the civilians killed in American wars?


Reported security incidents
#1: Police killed three potential suicide bombers in Afghanistan's volatile east on Tuesday after the attackers stormed a government building and a gunfight was continuing against a fourth assailant, authorities said. Two policemen were killed in the firefight, the ministry of the interior said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in Paktika province, which shares a porous and ill-defined border with Pakistan. The four insurgents, with small explosives strapped to their bodies and carrying grenade launchers, targeted the government communications office near the home of the Paktika governor Mohebullah Samim. “One policeman was killed and part of the communications building is now on fire,” Samim told Reuters, adding the fourth insurgent “was still resisting”. Troops from NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) were providing air support, he said.

#2: A remote-controlled bomb blast killed 35 people and wounded more than 60 others in the deadliest attack in months in the Taliban-hit tribal region of northwest Pakistan. The explosion on Tuesday took place in a market in Jamrud, one of the towns of the troubled Khyber tribal region, which also used to serve as the main supply route for NATO forces operating in Afghanistan. 'The total number of deaths in the blast is 35 while 69 people were wounded, and of them the condition of 11 is critical,' a senior administration official Shakeel Khan Umarzai told AFP.

A bomb has killed at least 23 people and wounded 26 when it exploded near a fuel station in Pakistan's northwestern Khyber region, one of the restive tribal areas where insurgents are battling government forces, regional officials said. "It was a huge blast and caused damage to a number of vehicles at (a) bus terminal," said Khyber tribesman Khan Zaman from the Jamrud bazaar, around 25 kilometres west of the city of Peshawar. Tribesman said members of the pro-government Zakhakhel tribal militia were the target of the attack. Members of the militia - or "lashkar" - were filling their vehicles at the station when the bomb exploded. Assistant Political Agent Jamrud Mohammad Jamil Khan said three members of the Khasadar tribal police force were killed.

#3: Ten Taliban insurgents were killed in an operation by Afghan and foreign forces in northern Afghanistan, Afghan police said Tuesday. Sher Jan Durani, a police spokesman for the northern province of Balkh, said the rebels were killed overnight in the province's Charchenak district. 'Insurgents used rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire to engage the security force,' the statement said.

#4: An Afghan soldier turned his gun on U.S. military personnel while they were playing volleyball at a camp in southern Afghanistan, killing one and wounding three others before being fatally shot, the Afghan police said Monday. It was the third time in just over two weeks that a man wearing an Afghan Army uniform attacked NATO personnel. In the earlier cases, the Taliban claimed responsibility, although there was no immediate claim in this case that the Afghan soldier had Taliban sympathies. The attack took place Sunday afternoon in Qalat, the capital of Zabul province. The Afghan soldier approached the volleyball game and appeared to watch the soldiers play before opening fire with an M-16 assault rifle, said Ghulam Jilani Farahi, deputy police chief of Zabul province. Another U.S. soldier who heard the firing shot and killed the attacker, he said.

#5: A total of six people were injured Tuesday morning when two successive blasts rocked Jalalabad city, the provincial capital of eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, said the country's Interior Ministry. "Initially, there was a mine explosion in front of a shop in the first precinct of Jalalabad city at around 6:00 a.m. local time, with no casualties, but shortly after a unit of police arrived in the scene another bomb went off, injuring six people," the ministry said in a press release. It said the injured include two policemen, two mine clearance personnel, a child and a member of Afghan National Directorate of Security or intelligence agency.


DoD: Staff Sgt. Jonathan M. Metzger

DoD: Spc. Robert J. Tauteris Jr.

DoD: Spc. Christopher A. Patterson

DoD: Spc. Brian J. Leonhardt

Posted by whisker at 3:40 AM

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