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, August 31, 2017

Update for Thursday, August 31, 2017

Iraqi PM Abadi declares victory over IS in Tal Afar and all of Nineveh province as Iraqi forces gain control of the town of al-’Ayadiya, to which the last resistance had retreated. However, fighting continues. (Remember that fighting continued for a couple of weeks after Abadi declared victory in Mosul.)

U.S. bombs a road in Syria to stop an IS convoy moving toward the Iraqi border from Lebanon. The convoy was transporting IS members who had been trapped near the Syria-Lebanon border and were being allowed to move to Deir al-Zour Province under an agreement among the Lebanese and Syrian governments and Hezbollah. However, the Iraqi and U.S. governments do not accept the agreement.

In Afghanistan, the DoD admits there are actually 11,000 U.S. troops, rather than the 8,400 previously reported. This does not include the additional troops being sent under the new "strategy," which consists of sending more troops to do something unspecified.


Posted by Cervantes at 7:48 AM

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