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


Wednesday, February 5, 2014

War News for Wednesday, February 05, 2014


German deployments extended to Afghanistan, Mali

US cuts back on drone strikes in Pakistan, report


Reported security incidents
#1: Eight people were killed and 42 injured on Tuesday when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a charity hotel in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar, officials said, in an apparent sectarian attack. “Eight people were killed and twenty six have been injured in a suicide blast outside a local hotel yards away from an imambargah,” senior police official Faisal Mukhtar said.

#2: The blast came as a prominent scholar was gunned down in the same part of the city on Tuesday morning, in what also appeared to be a targeted sectarian killing.

#3: Three militants were killed and five others detained in military operations carried out by Afghan security forces since early Tuesday, said the country's Interior Ministry on Wednesday.

Posted by whisker at 5:05 AM

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