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, June 22, 2017

Update for Thursday, June 22, 2017


In what is widely viewed as a concession of defeat, IS destroys the al-Nuri mosque in Mosul. The historic mosque, from which Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared himself Caliph in 2014, was 850 years old.

UNICEF says that more than 5 million Iraqi children are in urgent need of aid.

More than 5 million children are in urgent need of aid in Iraq, the United Nations said on Thursday, describing the war on Islamic State as "one of the most brutal" in modern history. "Across Iraq, children continue to witness sheer horror and unimaginable violence," the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) said in a statement. "They have been killed, injured, abducted and forced to shoot and kill in one of the most brutal wars in recent history." In Mosul, children are being deliberately targeted and killed by Islamic State militants to punish families and deter them from fleeing, it said.
In Afghanistan,  a suicide car bombing at a bank in Laskar Gah kills at least 29 people including troops and government workers who were waiting to collect their pay. TOLO puts the death toll at 34.




Posted by Cervantes at 7:07 AM

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