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


Friday, May 4, 2012

War News for Friday, May 04, 2012

NATO is reporting the death of an ISAF soldier from non-combat related injuries in an undisclosed location in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday, May 3rd.

NATO is reporting the deaths of two ISAF soldiers from an insurgent attack in an undisclosed location in southern Afghanistan on Friday, May 4th.


Countries agree on $1.9bn Afghan refugee strategy

Clashes in Turkey kill 3 soldiers, 2 PKK militants

Double Blast in Volatile Russian Region Kills 13

US soldier dies of rabies after dog bite in Afghanistan - A 24-year-old American soldier died of rabies after being bitten by a dog last year in Afghanistan, US health officials said Thursday following an investigation into the rare case.


Reported security incidents
#1: An official of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) was killed during a militant attack in the western province of Ghor in Afghanistan on Thursday. Mohiuddin was killed when the Taliban stormed the BRAC office in Chaghcharan, the provincial capital, just before dawn, acting police chief, Col. Murtaza Musleh, told Pajhwok Afghan News. Another Bangladeshi managed to flee the scene, he said, adding a wounded attacker was arrested after the incident. The detainee told police five insurgents, involved in the attack, wanted to kidnap the Bangladeshis. The militants sought to swap the foreigners for their detained associates, according to escapee, Samiul Haq, who said: "The office head was killed on the spot, but I succeeded in fleeing soon after the assailants entered the building." He added an Afghan worker of the organisation, who was sharing the room with the office head, escaped unhurt in the assault.

#2: A suicide bomber has killed at least 19 people and injured more than 50 others in an attack on a security checkpoint in northwest Pakistan. Officials say the bomber struck on May 4 near a crowded market in Khar, regional capital of the Bajaur tribal district, on the border with Afghanistan. The dead are reported to include two senior officers of the Bajaur Levies, a tribal police force in the remote region. At least five other policemen were also killed. Schoolchildren and other civilians were among the dead and injured.
#3: A total of 11 Taliban militants were killed over night when the NATO-led forces launched an air attack in Gereshk district of southern Helmand province, a police source said on Friday. "Eleven Taliban rebels were killed after they were spotted with weapons in Hous-e-Khoshk area of Gereshk district Thursday night," a police official and head of the coordination center of joint forces in the province, Muhammad Ismail Hotak, told Xinhua. He said the armed militants intended to launch attacks on security check posts in the area and the police forces called in an air support killing the entire attackers on the spot.

#4: Meantime, Hotak also confirmed that Taliban militants launched armed attacks in Naw Zad, Musa Qala and Sangin districts Thursday night but Afghan police and army soldiers repelled the attacks and causing no casualties on side of security forces. However, a Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi told local media that the insurgent fighters launched massive coordinated attacks across the Helmand province killing several Afghan and foreign troops.

#5: Separately, nine Taliban insurgents were killed in eastern Afghan provinces when Afghan and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) launched cleanup operations in the region within 24 hours ended on May 3, the ISAF's Regional Command East said in a statement on Friday morning. Operations in Regional Command East are still ongoing, the statement added.

#6: Afghan Intelligence, National Directorate for Security officials on Thursday said Afghan security forces foiled a deadly suicide bomb blast in capital Kabul. The officials further added the militants were looking to carry out suicide bomb blast using a truck laden with explosives. An Afghan NDS officials speaking on the condition of anonymity said a Pakistani militant wanted to detonate a truck packed with explosives in Kabul-Jalalabad road.




2 comments:

Dancewater said...

Still some US troops in Iraq

Dancewater said...

Violence against media worsening in Iraq

The JFO said three journalists were killed in attacks over the past year, while seven others survived assassination attempts. Thirty-one others were beaten by what the rights group said were uniformed and plain-clothes security forces, and 65 were arrested.

It said it had compiled 84 cases of security forces banning media coverage, 43 cases of them blocking the free movement of reporters and 12 instances of cameras being destroyed or confiscated.

Two media organisations were raided by security forces, the JFO said, and a radio station in southern Iraq was shut down.

The organisation also voiced alarm over what it argued were vague and far-reaching laws, from a journalists' protection law that contains provisions for authorities to limit information, and a bill that penalises Internet use that contravenes ill-defined terms such as "public interests."

"Official security decrees limiting journalists' work have been on the rise in the past year, despite government statements to the contrary," the JFO said.

Iraq regularly ranks near the bottom of global press freedom rankings. It placed 152nd out of 179 countries in media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders' 2011-2012 World Press Freedom Index, down 22 from the year before.