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


Friday, April 18, 2014

War News for Friday, April 18, 2014

The DoD is reporting the death of Spc. Kerry M. G. Danyluk who died at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany on Tuesday, April 15th. He was wounded from a small arms weapons attack in Pul-e-Alam, Logar province, Afghanistan on Saturday, April 12th.


Reported security incidents
#1: An official says three Taliban insurgents escaped from a prison in northern Afghanistan using weapons smuggled into the facility in a jailbreak that killed three police guards. A spokesman for the Faryab provincial government, Ahmad Jawad Dedar, said on Friday that the breakout took place the previous night. A fourth inmate who was also trying to escape was killed in a shootout with security forces.

Taliban militants attacked a prison with rockets in Afghanistan's northern Faryab province and set free four inmates, police said on Friday. "A group of Taliban rebels targeted the prison in the provincial capital Maimana with four rockets late Thursday, enabling four militants to escape," Xinhua quoted Mohammad Naeem Andarabi, deputy head of provincial police, as saying. He also confirmed that the rocket attack and clash with militants had left two police and a Taliban fighter dead.

#3: A security man was killed and two others were injured Friday as militants targeted a security forces’ vehicle in an explosion on Frontier road on the outskirts of Peshawar.

Posted by whisker at 3:24 AM

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