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, December 16, 2013

War News for Monday, December 16, 2013


Forty Australians dead and 261 seriously wounded in Afghanistan

DOD Identifies Units for Upcoming Afghanistan Rotation


Reported security incidents
#1: A roadside bomb ripped through a police vehicle in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, killing a district police chief and three policemen, an official said. The police chief of Pachir Wa Agam district of Nangarhar province had escaped an ambush by militants and was on the way to his office when his vehicle hit a roadside bomb, provincial spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdulzai said. “The police chief of Pachir Wa Agam along with three policemen were killed and seven police were wounded,” he said.

#2: Police in northwestern Pakistan say a roadside bomb has killed a senior bomb disposal officer and two members of his team, in Pakistan's troubled northwest region.

#3-4: Four Afghan army soldiers were killed and six others wounded in separate bomb attacks since late Sunday, said the country's defense ministry on Monday.

#3: "Two soldiers were martyred and one wounded in an improvised explosive device (IED) or roadside bomb attack in Nadir Shah Kot district of eastern Khost province," the ministry said in a statement.

#4: One army soldier was killed and five injured in similar blast in Chak district of eastern Wardak province and one army personnel was killed in an IED attack in eastern Kapisa province, the statement said.

#5: Ten militants were killed in an Afghan army operation in the country's eastern province of Ghazni overnight, said an army source on Monday. "Based on a tip off, the Afghan army launched an operation in Godar area of Andar district Sunday night. As a result 10 armed insurgents, including a key militant leader named Mawlawi Raouf, were killed in the raid," the army spokesman in the province Nazifullah Sultani said.

#6: According local authorities in western Herat province of Afghanistan, an Afghan soldier has killed his 2 comrades in latest insider attack. Mr. Alokozai further added that the assailant soldier was also killed.

Posted by whisker at 4:12 AM

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