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, March 8, 2012

War News for Thursday, March 08, 2012

Afghan air force probed in drug running investigation

War kills: US Army suicides rose 80% after Iraq invasion

National Guard (in Federal Status) and Reserve Activated as of March 6, 2012


Reported security incidents
#1: Nine local policemen were killed following a militant attack in Afghanistan's central province of Uruzgan, officials said on Thursday. Taliban fighters attacked a local police's checkpoint, killing nine policemen in the Dashi area of Charchino district, the governor's office said in a statement. Official sources said that one of the policemen had links with Taliban fighters who assailed the checkpoint. Nine policemen were killed and a 10th was missing as a result of the assault, head of district development council, Juma Gul, said. A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying they killed 10 policemen in the checkpoint.

#2: Afghan officials say a roadside bomb has gone off in the country’s east, wounded 11 people, including four policemen. Nangarhar provincial government spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdulzai says Thursday’s bomb was hidden beside a road in Jalalabad city. He says most of the wounded were people who were walking by when the bomb exploded. Four of the injured were police.

#3: A Spanish soldier was wounded Wednesday while on patrol in northwestern Afghanistan, but is out of danger, the Spain’s Defense Ministry said. The soldier, whose identity is being withheld, was part of a mission to re-supply an Afghan army observation post near Spain’s Bernardo de Galvez base in Ludina. Wounded when insurgents fired on the patrol.

#4: Four civilians were killed and 10 injured on Wednesday when a remote-controlled motorbike bomb exploded in an Afghan town on the border with Pakistan, police said. Officials blamed the attack, in the town of Spin Boldak in Kandahar province, on the Taliban, who are waging a 10-year insurgency against the Western-backed government in Kabul. "There was a motorbike bomb blast against border police in Spin Boldak. Four civilians, one of them a woman, were killed and 10 others were injured," said Janan, a rapid-reaction police unit commander who uses only one name.

#5: Gunmen opened fire at a bus station in the Kech area of the southwestern Baluchistan province, killing five people, police officials said.

#6: An explosion shocked northern Kunduz city on Thursday, casualties feared, a local official said.


MoD: Sergeant Nigel Coupe

MoD: Corporal Jake Hartley

MoD: Private Anthony Frampton

MoD: Private Christopher Kershaw

MoD: Private Daniel Wade

MoD: Private Daniel Wilford

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