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


Saturday, November 29, 2014

War News for Saturday, November 29, 2014


Reported security incidents
#1: Taliban militants breached the perimeter of a huge former U.S. and British base handed over to the Afghan army last month and were fighting soldiers there on Saturday, officials said. The militants and army forces were exchanging sporadic gunfire on Saturday morning at Camp Bastion in the southern province of Helmand as fighting entered a third day, said Gen. Ayatullah Khan, commander of the army regiment in the area.

#2: A prominent Sunni Muslim leader from a religious political party was shot dead in a pre-dawn attack in southern Pakistan on Saturday, police said. Doctor Khalid Mehmood Soomro, a leader from the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F) party in southern Sindh province was offering his morning prayers when unidentified gunmen entered the mosque and shot him dead.

#3: A senior politician was today killed in an early morning shooting in Pakistan's southern Sindh province. Khalid Mehmood Soomro, senior leader of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam Fazl (JUI-F), was leaving a mosque in Sukkur after morning prayers when he was targeted by unknown gunmen.

#4: Pakistan Army killed at least seven suspected militants and injured 12 others in airstrikes in the northwestern Khyber tribal region, a senior military official said

Posted by whisker at 3:06 AM

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