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


Thursday, July 30, 2015

Update for Thursday, July 30, 2015


Matters are getting clearer and murkier at the same time. The Taliban confirm that Mullah Omar is dead, but they don't say when he died. They also claim he died in Afghanistan and not, as has been widely believed, in Pakistan under the protection of the Pakistani government. [There is no particular reason to believe them on this point, obviously. -- C]

Although they have not announced it officially, the Taliban Shura in Quetta is reported to have appointed Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour as his successor. Well okay, but Mansour has been effectively running the organization for a while now, it appears, and if Omar really has been dead for more than two years, this would be a formality. I would also note that since the Taliban leadership is based in Quetta, Pakistan, it would have been odd for their leader not to have been there, as the Taliban claim. And there's this:

Afghanistan had said Omar died in April, 2013 in a Pakistani hospital, but Pakistani officials could not confirm that. "We are aware of the reports and trying to ascertain the details," Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman Qazi Khalilullah said.
That is ridiculous. Of course the Pakistani government knows whether Omar died in a hospital in Karachi or not. In any case, the peace talks in Pakistan have been suspended, while the Taliban office in Doha says it has never heard of them.

So, Michael Kugelman in Foreign Affairs thinks it odd that the Afghan government would make the announcement at this time, when the Pakistanis and the Taliban were still sitting on it, since it appears to have scuttled the peace talks, which supposedly the Afghan government wanted.  He doesn't really have an answer, except that it may have been a miscalculation -- maybe they thought it would help unite the Taliban movement and create a more credible interlocutor. Or maybe they knew it was about to come out anyway so they preempted it.

I really don't know what to make of all this, but we'll continue to watch it.

Posted by Cervantes at 9:46 AM

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