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, April 14, 2014

War News for Monday, April 14, 2014


Pakistan to release more Taliban prisoners


Reported security incidents
#1: At least two drivers in a convoy of Afghanistan-bound NATO tankers in Pakistan’s restive north-west were shot dead on Monday, an official said. Gunmen fired rocket-propelled grenades and bullets at oil tankers in the Jamrud area near Peshawar city on the main highway leading into Afghanistan, administration official Amjad Khan said.

#2: Afghan security forces killed two Pakistani nationals who had mistakenly entered into Afghanistan near Badini area on Monday morning, a Levies official said. A Levies official who requested not to be named, since he was not authorised to speak to media, told that two shepherds had mistakenly slipped into Afghanistan from Badini. He said the Afghan security forces deployed at the border opened unprovoked gunfire without any warning killing the two shepherds on the spot.

#3: Five insurgents including a key commander were killed on Sunday in a security forces operation in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, officials said. Security forces launched the operation on a tip-off in a mountainous area in the suburbs of Peshawar, the capital of the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, bordering Afghanistan.

#4: Afghan police backed by the army have killed 14 Taliban militants and injured six others during series of operations across the country over the past 24 hours, Interior Ministry said in a statement released here on Monday.
 
#5-7: Nine civilians were killed while three others wounded in attacks in Afghanistan, authorities said on Monday.

#5: In one attack, an anti-Taliban local leader along with two of his body-guards was killed in a Taliban ambush attack in eastern Ghazni province earlier on Monday.

#6: On Sunday evening, two staffs of Afghan National Solidarity Program (NSP) were shot dead in Takhta Pul district of southern province of Kandahar. They were kidnapped on Wednesday April 9. Another three kidnapped workers were released by the militants.

#7: In neighboring Helmand province, the bullet-riddle bodies of four kidnapped workers of a local construction company were found in Gereshk district late on Sunday.

#8: Afghan intelligence operatives foiled a suicide attack plot in southern Uruzgan province of Afghanistan.

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