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


Thursday, March 21, 2013

War News for Thursday, March 21, 2013

The Polish MoND is reporting the death of a soldier unreported by NATO. Senior Private Paweł Ordyński died from a roadside bombing north-west of Ghazni, Afghanistan on Wednesday, March 20th. One additional soldier was wounded in the attack.


Military takeover of lethal drone operations under consideration


Reported security incidents
#1: Police say a roadside bomb has killed a district administrator and two of his bodyguards in northern Afghanistan. Thursday's attack in Takhar province came as Afghans were celebrating the first day of the Persian new year, or Nowruz. Police spokesman Abdul Khalil Asir says the bomb went off as the official drove over a bridge near his home in Ishkamish district.

#2: At least twelve people were killed on Thursday by a car bomb at a camp in northwest Pakistan for people displaced by fighting between government forces and Islamist militants, police said. The bomb exploded in the Jalozai camp in Nowshera in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, an area bordering Afghanistan and a stronghold for insurgents bent on toppling Pakistan's U.S.-backed government. "Food was being distributed among the internally displaced persons when the blast took place," Nowshera police chief Mohammad Hussain told Reuters, adding that 35 people were wounded.

#3: Eight Afghans were killed and eight others sustained injuries as two blasts hit the restive Helmand province in the south and relatively peaceful Takhar province in the north on Thursday, officials confirmed. In the first blast which took place in the premise of a Medressah or religious school in Marja district of the southern Helmand province with Lashkar Gah as its capital 555 km south of Kabul, five people were killed and six others injured, provincial administration spokesman Farid Zirak said. “An explosive device, apparently a suicide vest, exploded inside a Medressah in Shin Ghazak village of Marja district at around 07:00 a.m. local time, leaving five seminarians dead and injured six others,” Zirak told Xinhua.


Pol/MoND: Senior Private Paweł Ordyński

Posted by whisker at 3:51 AM

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