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, November 16, 2013

War News for Saturday, November 16, 2013


Reported security incidents
#1: Police say a bomb has exploded near the venue where thousands of influential Afghan figures will gather next week to debate a key U.S.-Afghan security pact. The powerful blast was heard around 3 p.m. local time near the compound on the western edge of the Afghan capital.

#2: Afghan police killed five Taliban militants during series of operations throughout the country over the past 24 hours, the Interior Ministry said in a statement Saturday. The operations, according to the statement, were carried out in Balkh, Kapisa, Kandahar, Logar and Helmand provinces during which one more militant was wounded and two others arrested.

#3-5: Multiple bomb blasts shook Pakistan's northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province today, killing at least one policeman and injuring nearly a dozen people.

#3: Officials said a police van was targeted with a roadside bomb in Mandi area. A policeman was killed and two more were injured.

#4: Earlier, an attack by a suspected suicide bomber in Bannu wounded four paramilitary Frontier Corps personnel and two passers-by, media reports said.

#5: Another bomb attack on the outskirts of the provincial capital of Peshawar injured three persons. Bomb disposal squad officials said an estimated five kilograms of explosives concealed in a cylinder went off near a police van on Kohat Road. The van was destroyed and two policemen and a woman were injured. 

#6: A roadside bomb struck a police van injuring nine people including five civilians outside Nangarhar's provincial capital Jalalabad, 120 km east of Kabul on Saturday, police said. "The tragic incident took place at 11:00 a.m. local time injuring nine people including five innocent civilians and four policemen,"provincial police chief Fazal Ahmad Shirzad told Xinhua.


DoD: Staff Sgt. Richard L. Vazquez

Posted by whisker at 4:15 AM

2 comments:

Dancewater said...

From The Guardian:

A US army soldier has been charged with premeditated murder in connection with the deaths of two civilians during the Iraq war.

A Joint Base Lewis-McChord release said that Sergeant 1st Class Michael Barbera was charged in connection with the 2007 killings. The charges stem from an investigation into the shootings of two people near the village of As Sadah in Diyala Province on 6 March 2007.

Officials say Barbera is currently assigned to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska. They say Barbera is not in pre-trial confinement, but is awaiting a transfer to the Washington state base.

While Barbera has been charged, the next step is an Article 32 investigation to decide if he should be court martialled. No date has been scheduled for the Article 32.

November 16, 2013 at 8:12 PM
Dancewater said...

10 reported killed in that suicide bombing in Kabul. Taliban claimed they did the bombing.

November 16, 2013 at 8:14 PM

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