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


Sunday, July 6, 2014

News of the Day for Sunday, July 6, 2014

After 12 days of fighting, Taliban take control of Askin valley in Kapisa. Local residents and police have fled to neighboring Laghman province.

Local officials say 38 Taliban and 2 border police are killed in fighting in Paktia Friday night. [One is forced to wonder about these highly disproportionate casualty totals. The Taliban, who have yet to comment on this incident, always have a radically different accounting. -- C]

National Directorate of Security says Taliban leader Mullah Jamaluddin was killed in an operation in Lashkargah, Helmand.

ANA soldier is killed, 4 civilians and 1 police officer injured by a motorcycle bomb in southern Kandahar.

Flow of refugees from North Waziristan in Khost reverses the long-term pattern of refugees fleeing Afghanistan entering Pakistan. The Pakistani military, waging a scorched earth campaign in North Waziristan, has told civilians to leave and that anyone who remains will be considered Taliban. Note that the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban are separate organizations with differing objectives and ideologies. Afghan officials, while doing their best to succor the refugees with what little they have, are concerned that there could be infiltrators among them.

Negotiations between the candidates over the electoral impasse continue. Ghani continues to decry delay in release of results.

The Daily Mail reports that the Taliban have reclaimed hundreds of square miles formerly held by British soldiers, based on e-mails it has obtained from an intelligence officer:

Huge swathes of Helmand Province, the area of Afghanistan where hundreds of British soldiers were killed in eight years of bloody fighting, are once again in the hands of the Taliban, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. The districts of Now Zad, Musa Qala and Sangin have been overrun by insurgents after British troops withdrew to the security of Camp Bastion – the last remaining UK base in the province.

The return of the Taliban to hundreds of square miles of territory which was previously liberated by British soldiers makes a mockery of Prime Minister David Cameron’s declaration of ‘mission accomplished’ in Afghanistan.



Posted by Cervantes at 4:49 AM

1 comments:

Ligue 1 Live said...

The Afganistan is passing a very terrible time. The peoples are very much conscious, they are surviving.

July 24, 2014 at 4:23 PM

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