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


Friday, March 29, 2013

War News for Friday, March 29, 2013


Study: Iraq, Afghan Wars Will Cost $4T to $6T

Taliban Spread Terror in Karachi as the New Gang in Town

Pakistan criticize Kabul for ‘overreaction’ on cross-border shelling


Reported security incidents
#1: Meanwhile, a suicide bomber on a bicycle attacked the convoy of a paramilitary police commander in northwestern Pakistan, killing 11 people, including a four month-old infant, police said. The attack on the paramilitary police commander's convoy in northwestern Pakistan occurred in the city of Peshawar. The apparent target, Abdul Majeed Marwat, who heads the Frontier Constabulary, was not hurt, said police official Dost Mohammed Khan. The 11 dead included five members of the security forces and six civilians, said Khan. The civilians included two women, a young girl and a four month-old infant. Another 22 people were wounded, said Khan.

#2: A Taliban shadow governor was killed in northern Afghan province of Faryab overnight, the provincial government spokesman said on Thursday. "Upon intelligence report, an Afghan border police force carried out a search operation to capture a Taliban shadow governor named Khirullah Khan but during the firefight Khan and two other Taliban insurgents were killed in Qaramqol district Wednesday night," spokesman Jawid Beidar told Xinhua.


DoD: Sgt. Michael C. Cable

Posted by whisker at 3:49 AM

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I want to see a single day to hear the news that day has passed peacefully
No human being is killed
At least no Muslim is killed
No human is slave
All countries have defused atom bombs and abandoned atomic program.
lets live for peace of humanity
human lives are precious.

March 29, 2013 at 9:44 AM
Dancewater said...

And even if history ultimately judges the allied invasion to have been a kind of catalyst that made Iraq a better place, that's not how it looked to Marwa. She remembers it only as a time of fear and destruction.

Her recollection of that time reminds you that war is only complex to strategists and historians. To its victims, it's pretty simple.

The story of the effects of war on a young girl. Her life will NEVER be what it should have been.

March 29, 2013 at 11:43 AM

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