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


Monday, September 3, 2012

War News for Monday, September 03, 2012



Hitting Pause in Afghanistan


Reported security incidents
#1: A suicide car bomb targeted a US diplomatic vehicle in the volatile city of Peshawar on Monday morning, killing two bystanders and wounding 19, including the passengers. Remarkably no one inside the car was killed by the huge rush-hour blast, which left a crater in the road and toppled nearby walls. Television footage showed a completely burned-out four-wheel drive vehicle at the scene, thought to be the vehicle that was attacked. Immediately after the blast, the information minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province claimed four people had been killed, including two Americans. But the US state department denied that, saying "two US personnel" and two Pakistani members of staff were injured in the attack, which local police say involved more than 100kg of explosives.

#2: Five civilians and an Afghan army soldier were injured Monday morning in a bomb blast in the northern Afghan province of Balkh, an official said. "Six wounded people including an army soldier were admitted to a provincial capital hospital in Mazar-i-Sharif city at around 11 a.m. local time Monday," a health official told Xinhua. Earlier, a police spokesman in the northern Afghanistan, Lal Mohammad Ahmadzai, told Xinhua that three civilians were injured in the explosion caused by a sticky bomb attached to a bicycle near the building of provincial department of culture and information in the city, some 305 km north of the Afghan capital Kabul.
 
#3: A vehicle exploded near the entrance of a military outpost (Wardak province) on Saturday morning, killing 12 people and destroying military equipment. One Czech soldier present at the time of the attack was not injured.

#4: Up to 13 Taliban militants have been killed and 13 others detained in eight operations carried out by the Afghan police, army and the NATO-led troops over the past 24 hours, the country's Interior Ministry said Monday morning. "The cleanup operations were launched in Takhar, Kunduz, Kandahar, Logar, Ghazni, Khost, Farah and Helmand provinces and the joint forces also found and seized weapons and explosives during the above raids," the ministry said in a statement. The statement did not say if there were any casualties on the side of security forces. A total of five Afghan border policemen were killed and six others injured in a roadside bombing in eastern Nuristan province on Sunday morning.


AU/DoD: Lance Corporal Stjepan Milosevic

AU/DoD:  Sapper James Martin

AU/DoD: Private Robert Poate

Posted by whisker at 4:08 AM

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