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, May 16, 2013

War News for Thursday, May 16, 2013

NATO is reporting the deaths of four ISAF soldiers from a roadside bombing attack in an undisclosed location in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, May 14th.
 
NATO is reporting the deaths of two ISAF soldiers from a suicide roadside bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan on Thursday, May 16th. Four contractors were also killed in the blast. News reports that a suicide vehicle attacked a NATO convoy which also killed and wounded numerous Afghanis.


Reported security incidents
#1: Gunmen on Thursday killed the driver of a NATO supply truck driving through northwest Pakistan near the Afghan border, local officials said. The shooting took place in the Jamrud area of Khyber. "Two gunmen on a motorcycle fired at a NATO truck and killed its driver," local government official Asmatullah Wazir told AFP.

#2: At least 17 government armed oppositions were killed during a clearance operation launched by the Afghan security forces in some areas of eastern Nangarhar province, an official said Thursday. Provincial police chief, Hussain Mashreqiwal told Wakht News Agency that the Afghan security forces including police, army and NDS have attended the operations coordinated with the coalition troops that launched in some districts of the province, he said.

Posted by whisker at 4:48 AM

1 comments:

Dancewater said...

From Reuters today:

A suicide bomber in a car attacked a convoy of foreign troops in Kabul on Thursday, killing at least 15 people including six Americans, Afghan and foreign officials said, in one of the worst attacks in the Afghan capital in months.

Forty people were wounded in the blast at around 8 a.m. (0330 GMT) during the morning rush-hour. It caused heavy damage to mud-built houses in the vicinity.

The Hezb-e-Islami insurgent group, which is allied with the Taliban, claimed responsibility For the attack on the two-vehicle convoy.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said the bomber killed two of its members and four civilian contractors. It declined to give nationalities.

May 16, 2013 at 4:05 PM

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