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, March 30, 2013

War News for Saturday, March 30, 2013

NATO is reporting the death of an ISAF soldier from a non-combat related injury in an undisclosed location in southern Afghanistan on Friday, March 29th.


Reported security incidents
#1: Up to 12 Taliban militants were killed Saturday in a coalition airstrike in the eastern Afghan province of Ghazni, authorities said. “(Saturday) in the morning the ANSF (Afghan National Security Forces) and Coalition Forces conducted a successful attack on a group of armed Taliban extremists in Espand-de village in eastern Ghazni city,” said a statement issued by coalition here. Meantime, a provincial health official, Baz Mohammad Himat, told Xinhua that a total of eight civilians have been admitted to a provincial capital hospital who sustained injuries in the airstrike in Espand-de area Saturday morning.

#2: In addition, the Afghan army and police supported by the coalition forces have killed 14 Taliban insurgents, wounded four and arrested four others in Nangarhar, Laghman, Badakhshan, Kandahar and Helmand provinces within the last 24 hours, the country’s Interior Ministry said in a statement earlier Saturday.

#3: A suicide bomber Saturday struck a police patrol in a town in northwestern Pakistan, killing a policeman and wounding six others, police said. The bombing took place at a market in Katalang, 50 kilometres (30 miles) northeast of Peshawar, the capital of restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province which borders Afghanistan. "A policeman was killed and two other policemen were wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up close to a police patrol car," senior police official Shafi Ullah told AFP. Four civilians were also wounded in the suicide bombing, Ullah said. After the bombing police chased an alleged handler of the suicide bomber and killed him in a shoot out, the official said.

Posted by whisker at 4:34 AM

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