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FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. Sgt. Eric M. Houck was a dedicated soldier, a proud father of two and was several months into his first overseas deployment when he was killed in Afghanistan with two fellow soldiers, his father says.

Houck, 25, was to have returned home next month. He died along with two fellow members of the 101st Airborne Division based at Fort Campbell, an Army post on the Kentucky-Tennessee line.

The sergeant from Baltimore was killed Saturday in Afghanistan's Nangarhar Province along with Sgt. William M. Bays, 29, of Barstow, California, and Cpl. Dillon C. Baldridge, 22, of Youngsville, North Carolina, authorities said.

The Department of Defense said in a statement Monday that the soldiers died of wounds received while supporting a military operation called Freedom's Sentinel. But it didn't elaborate, saying the deaths remain under investigation and no other details were being released at this time.

"Today, as we grieve, our thoughts and prayers are with the families of Cpl. Baldridge, Sgt. Houck and Sgt. Bays. We take this as a family loss," said Maj. Gen. Andrew Poppas, Commanding General of the 101st Airborne Division and Fort Campbell. "In the days ahead, the 101st Soldiers ... will continue the fight against terrorism with unbridled determination."

In Washington, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer spoke about the deaths at his regular press briefing Monday.

"I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the three service members that were killed this weekend in Afghanistan. The incident is currently under investigation, but our thoughts and our prayers are with the families of these American heroes who've lost their lives in this tragic event," Spicer told reporters.

Houck enlisted a few years after graduating from high school in the Baltimore suburbs. He had married his high school sweetheart and found in military duty a way to support his growing family and serve his country, his father said. The soldier leaves behind two young children.

"He was a husband and father first," said his father, Mike Houck. "He was a son and brother, and then he was a soldier. His family was the most important thing to him." He also loved playing soccer, football and baseball.

Mike Houck said he was nervous when he learned his only son would be heading overseas.

"If he was nervous, he didn't let on," Houck added. "He took it bravely, as his responsibility as a soldier. He was unwavering in his dedication to that. But as a parent you're nervous every day."

Houck began his military career as a private and rose to the rank of sergeant in just three years, his father said. He added that his son would travel in forward positions with the infantry and was responsible for directing airstrikes.

"He was exemplary," Houck said. "He was a hell of a father, a husband, a son, a brother, a soldier."

In North Carolina, WRAL-TV reported that the principal of Franklinton High School said many were saddened there by the death of Baldridge. A 2012 graduate of that school, he had gone to Afghanistan last October and was due to return in August, relatives told the station.

"Those that knew Dillon well remember him as a distinguished alumni of the class of 2012, who was a kindhearted and possessed a truly giving personality," Franklinton High School Principal Russell Holloman said in a statement. "He made an early commitment to the military during his high school career and maintained that focus and selfless dedication after graduation."

There was no immediate information about Barstow, the third soldier who died.

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NC soldier among 3 killed in Afghanistan, deaths under investigation - Greensboro News & Record

US Army paratroopers watch as a CH-47 Chinook helicopter descends to pick them up for an air-assault mission July 17, 2009, during a dust storm at Forward Operating Base Kushamond, Afghanistan. Many careers, reputations and programs tied to the war industry depend upon the continuation of the failed Afghan war. (Photo: Pfc. Andrya Hill / US Army)

President Donald Trump is hesitating to agree to thousands of additional troops for the war in Afghanistan as recommended by his secretary of defense and national security adviser, according to aNew York Times reportover the weekend.

So, it's a good time to put aside, for a moment, the troop request itself and focus on why the United States has been fighting the Taliban since 2001 -- and losing to them for well over a decade.

Some of the war managers would argue that the United States has never had enough troops or left them in Afghanistan long enough. But those very figures are openly calling for an indefinite neocolonial US military presence. The real reason for the fundamental weakness of the US-NATO war is the fact that the United States has empowered a rogues' gallery of Afghan warlords whose militias have imposed a regime of chaos, violence and oppression on the Afghan population -- stealing, killing and raping with utter impunity. And that strategy has come back to bite the Pentagon's war managers.

The Taliban hold the same sexist ideas as many members of rural Afghan society about keeping girls out of schools and in the home. But the organization appeared in 1994 in response to the desperate pleas of the population in the south -- especially in a Kandahar province divided up by four warlords -- to stop the wholesale abduction and rape of women and pre-teen boys, as well as the uncontrolled extortion of tolls by warlord troops. The Taliban portrayed themselves as standing for order and elementary justice against chaos and sexual violence, and they immediately won broad popular support to drive the warlords out of power across the south, finally taking over Kabul without a fight.

Then in 2001 the United States ousted the Taliban regime -- implicitly as retribution for 9/11, even though the Taliban leader Mullah Omar had not been informed of Osama bin Laden's plot andhad strongly opposed any such plotting. Instead of forcing the Taliban to give up its power or simply letting Afghan society determine the Taliban's fate, the United States helped its own warlord allies consolidate their power. President Hamid Karzai was encouraged to appoint the most powerful warlords as provincial governors and their private militias were converted into the national police.The CIA even put some of the militias on their payroll along with their warlord bosses to help track down Taliban and al Qaeda remnants.

These early US decisions created the plague of abuses by the "police" and other militias that has remained the underlying socio-political dynamic of the war ever since. Ron Neumann, US ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007, explained the accepted rules for the warlords and the commanders of their militias toward those who are not part of their tribal in-group."You take the people's land, their women -- you steal from them -- it's all part of one package," he told me in a 2009 interview.

It was not long before the Taliban began to reorganize for a second resistance to the warlords. From 2003 to 2006, they were taking the offensive across the Pashtun area of the south, with a rapidly increasing tempo of attacks.

In 2006 the US-NATO command responded to the Taliban offensive by creating the "Afghan National Auxiliary Police" (ANAP).ANAP officers were given new AK-47 assault rifles and uniforms like those of regular police, but the group was in essence another warlord militia, composed of the same individuals as other warlord militias. As asenior official in the Afghan Ministry of Interiortold Human Rights Watch, the ANAP "was made for the warlords." They were "the same people, committing the same crimes, with more power."

The ANAP program was abandoned in April 2008, an apparent failure, butthe US-NATO reliance on the warlords' militias continued. When US and British troops moved back into Lashkar Gah district of Helmand Province in mid-2009, their plan was to rely on police to reestablish a government presence there. But the police, commanded by mujahideen loyal to province warlordSher Mohammed Akhunzadeh, had terrorized the population of the district with systematic violent abuses, including the frequent abduction and rape of pre-teenboys. Theresidentsand village elders warnedthe British and Americans stationed in the district that they would again support the Taliban if necessary to protect themselves against being victimized by the police.

By September 2009 as the US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal was pressing Obama to add 40,000 more troops, his command was no longer under any illusions about being able to regain the support of the rural Pashtun population as long as it was so closely associated with the warlords. In hisinitial assessment of August 2009,McChrystal referred to "public anger and alienation" toward the US and NATO troops, because of the general perception that they were "complicit" in "widespread corruption and abuse of power."

But by then McChrystal and the US-NATO command chose to continue to rely on their warlord clients, because the US military needed their militias to supply all the US and NATO troops in the country. In order to get food, fuel and arms to the foreign troops at over 200 forward-operating military bases and combat outposts, the command had to outsource the trucking of the supplies and the security to private companies. Otherwise the command would have had to use a large percentage of the total foreign troops in Afghanistan to provide security for the convoys, as the Russians had done in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

But the only plentiful and instantly available supply of armed forces to provide the security was in the ranks of the warlords' own militias. So, the Pentagon designed a massive$2.16 billion annual logistics contractin 2008-09 under which about 25,000 militiamen were paid by dozens of private trucking companies and security companies owned by the warlords. The warlords were paid tens of millions of dollars a year, further consolidating their hold on the society.

The abuses by militias continued to be the primary complaint of village residents. The district governor in Khanabad district of Kunduz provincetoldHuman Rights Watch, "People come to me and complain about thesearbakis[militias], but I can do nothing about this. They collectushr[informal tax], take the daughters of the people, they do things against the wives of the people, they take their horses, sheep, anything."

When he assumed command in Afghanistan in mid-2010, Gen. David Petraeus immediately decided to turn yet again to the same warlord source of manpower to create the"Afghan Local Police" or ALPto provide 20,000 men to patrol the villages. Each ALP unit had its own Special Forces team, which gave its officers even greater impunity. The chief of the Baghlan Province councilrecounted a meeting with the US Special Operations Forces officer in charge of the ALP at which he had warned that the militiamen were "criminals." But the officer had flatly rejected his charge.

In theory, the ALP was supposed to be accountable to the chief of police in each district where it was operating. Butone district chief of police in Baghlan provincecomplainedthat it was impossible to investigate ALP crimes because theUS Special Operations Forceswere protecting them.

A Green Beret officerinterviewed by the Christian Science Monitor in2011 explained the US Special Operations Forces' perspective on the depredations of its Afghan clients: "The ugly reality," he said, "is that if the US wants to prevail against the Taliban and its allies, it must work with Afghan fighters whose behavior insults Western sensibilities."

By 2013 the ALP had grown to nearly 30,000, and even the State Department annual report on human rights in Afghanistan acknowledged the serious abuses blamed on the ALP. The 2016 State Department report on human rights inAfghanistanrefers to"credible accounts of killing, rape, assault, the forcible levy of informal taxes, and the traditional practice of 'baad' -- the transfer of a girl or woman to another family to settle a debt or grievance" -- all attributed by villagers to the ALP.

The linkage between warlord militia abuses and the cooperation of much of the rural population with the Taliban has long been accepted by the US command in Afghanistan. But the war has continued, because it serves powerful interests that have nothing to do with Afghanistan itself: the careers of the US officers who serve there; the bureaucratic stakes of the Joint Special Operations Command and the CIA in their huge programs and facilities in the country; the political cost of admitting that it was a futile effort from the start. Plus, the Pentagon and the CIA are determined to hold on to Afghan airstrips they use to carry out drone war in Pakistan for as long as possible.

Thus Afghanistan, the first of the United States' permanent wars, is in many ways the model for all the others that have followed -- wars that have no other purpose than to serve the US war system itself.

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Why Afghanistan? Fighting a War for the War System Itself - Truth-Out

The Republic | azcentral.com 6:00 a.m. MT June 13, 2017

Officials say a truck exploded on one of the busiest streets in the Afghan capital. Video provided by Newsy Newslook

Members of the Afghan Students Association at ASU were joined by others Monday in front of Old Main to remember people killed in recent bombings in Afghanistan.(Photo: Robert Gundran)

A few dozen people gathered in front of Old Main at Arizona State University'sTempe campus Monday evening for a vigil for victims of recent bombings in Kabul and Herat, Afghanistan.

Approximately 40 people of different faiths and ethnicities attended the memorial. More than 150 people were killed in the Afghan bombings.

The event was organized by the Afghan Student Association at ASU.

The vigil beganwith a moment of silence before attendees spoke about the casualties and ongoing conflictin Afghanistan.

Afghans continue to bathe in the blood of their loved ones, said Fara Arefi, president of the Afghan Student Association.

There comes a time when we must stop seeing Afghan lives as just numbers. Afghanistan is more than just a land of casualties, she said.

Several members ofChurch of Latter-day Saints student groupat ASU attended the vigil, sayingthat although they might not have direct ties to Afghanistan, they view it as their duty to stand next to their fellow men and women.

God teaches us to love one another, and even though we found out about this event super last-minute, we were very excited to have the opportunity to gather with our brothers and sisters to stand together to express our sorrow, said Austin Hancock, a member of the LDS Student Association.

Members of the Afghan Student Association said such community support is importantbut doesnt stop there.

When anything happens elsewhere in the world, you know it through social media, news channels, but with what happened recently in Afghanistan, it was kind of hard for people to really understand whats going onbecause of the lack of people talking about it, said Zorah Zafari, vice president of the association.

Afghanistan has been facing things like this for the past couple of decades, and we want people to see that their lives also matter, and to treat their lives how they would treat lives over here, she said.

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ASU vigil remembers those killed in Afghanistan bombings - AZCentral.com

A convoy of U.S. and Afghan personnel was struck by a roadside bomb and attacked with small arms fire on Monday in eastern Afghanistan.

The group returned fire in self-defense, and there were no U.S. casualties, according to a press release from U.S. Forces Afghanistan.

The attack happened in Nangarhar Province, the same area where three U.S. Army soldiers were killed and one was wounded over the weekend. The Taliban claimed responsibility for that incident, which is believed to have been an insider attack perpetrated by an Afghan army soldier.

U.S. Forces Afghanistan said it had "not received any official allegations of civilian casualties" regarding Monday's ambush.

However, a spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar said at least three civilians were killed when the convoy returned fire, according to The New York Times.

"We take civilian casualties very seriously and all allegations are thoroughly investigated," U.S. Forces Afghanistan said in the press release.

There are 8,400 American troops training, advising and assisting the Afghan military in its fight against the Taliban.

ABC News' Luis Martinez contributed to this report.

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US convoy hit by roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan - ABC News

With Adam Rawnsley

Another bloody weekend in the Long War. Three U.S.soldiers were killed in Eastern Afghanistan over the weekend, and a convoy of U.S. troops was struck by a roadside bomb Monday morning in Nangarhar province, a hotbed of Islamic State activity along the Pakistani border.

Saturdays attack, which early indications are was carried out of an Afghan army commando who turned his weapon on the Americans before being killed by U.S. forces, brings the American death toll in Afghanistan this year to six, all killed in Nangarhar while fighting the Islamic State. Five of those six may have been killed by their own side, as the New York Times Rod Nordland points out.

New attack. The Taliban is claiming credit for Mondays attack on the American convoy. According to a statement issued by the U.S. military command in Kabul, U.S. and Afghan soldiers were struck by a roadside bomb and attacked with small arms fire in Nangarhar Province. The convoy returned fire in self-defense and there were no U.S. casualties. We have not received any official allegations of civilian casualties.

There are allegations that several Afghan civilians were wounded when the Americans opened fire after the attack. Defense officials say theyre investigating the report.

Somalia strike. In Somalia, U.S. warplanes hit what the U.S. Africa Command said was an al-Shabaab command and logistics node, at a camp about 185 miles south of Mogadishu. The strike killed an estimated eight militants. It was the first strike carried out by U.S. forces under new authorities granted in March by president Trump, which declared parts of Somalia an Area of Active Hostility, allowing local U.S. commanders more authority to strike the al Qaeda-affiliated group.

Just last month, a U.S. Navy SEAL was killed and two other troops wounded in a firefight with al Shabab, the first U.S. casualties in that country since the 1990s. While U.S. Defense officials insist the new authorities are not the start of a U.S. offensive against the group all strikes are taken to defend U.S. and Somali forces in the field the

Qatar and Al Udeid. Operations for the U.S.-led coalition nerve center ay Al Udeid air base in Qatar are continuing as normal despite the economic and diplomatic isolation slapped on the country by other Gulf Arab states last week, according to several U.S. officials.

One Defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told SitRep that the shunning of Qatar is testing our ability to work bilaterally and with the coalition, on the ISIS fight, since military officers from all of the Gulf nations work together in Al Udeids command center. The blockade cant stand for long before they starts to have a real effect on how operations are conducted, the official said.

Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of the U.S. Central Command, was traveling in the region when the Saudis and their Gulf allies cut Qatar off last Monday, and he spent several days shuttling between regional partners trying to work though the issues. Officials wouldnt go into detail about who he met with, citing the sensitivity of the issue and concerns over offending some allies.

Several military officials also confirmed that there are several dozen family members of U.S. military personnel living in Qatar, and they are working with the State Department to determine if they would leave the country.

To the Hill! Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford are heading to Capitol Hill Monday night, appearing before the House Armed Services Committee in an unusual 7 p.m. appearance to talk about the 2018 defense budget. Its the first stop in a week of hearings for the two top military officials, who hit the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense on Wednesday, and the House Appropriations Subcommittee Thursday morning.

Expect lots of non-budgetary questions, including an update on the strategy for the war in Iraq and Syria, the potential to send thousands more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, the threat Russia presents in Europe, North Korea, the situation in Qatar, and what effect climate change has on their operations. Mattis has remained mostly silent during his tenure as SecDef, giving few press conferences and interacting with the press as little as possible, as the New York Times notes in their look at how Mattis is navigating Washingtons perilous political waters.

North Korea. A forthcoming report from C4ADS due to be released Monday afternoon takes a deep dive on North Korean overseas financing, and finds that the countrys overseas proliferation financing system is highly centralized and limited, and thereby vulnerable to large-scale disruption, according to a pre-release email from the firm. If an adversary were to target just a few key individuals, C4ADS research suggests. it would be possible to disrupt the entire system.

Welcome to SitRep. Send any tips, thoughts or national security events to paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or via Twitter: @paulmcleary or @arawnsley.

Round three. The Philippine militarys efforts to take back Marawi City from Islamic State-affiliated terrorists is grinding on into its third week, Reuters reports. The uprising, triggered by an attempt by to capture militant leader Isnilon Hapilon, has killed nearly 60 Philippine troops so far. Philippine Foreign Affairs Minister Allan Peter Cayetano, however, claims that the effort to capture Hapilon prevented the group from seizing more cities.

Tag team. U.S. Special Forces are helping with battle in Marawi. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Philippines is so far only admitting to receiving non-combatant assistance from the U.S., which reportedly includes surveillance by P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft. The U.S. embassy says American special operations troops are helping with the fight but officials stress that American troops arent involved in actual combat. President Rodridgo Duterte previously threatened to end U.S. military deployments to the country following a fallout with the U.S. over human rights.

Swing and a miss. The Islamic States online recruitment efforts are proving all too resilient against Americas secret arsenal of cyber weapons. The New York Times reports that a joint effort by the NSA and Cyber Command to disrupt the distribution of online propaganda by the group, dubbed Operation Glowing Symphony, met with only mixed success, as Islamic State terrorists quickly rebuilt their online propaganda networks. But there have been some successes. The Times learned that Israeli cyberspies found out about the Islamic States attempts to build exploding laptops by hacking a bomb-making unit working for the group.

Willy Pete. U.S. forces fighting the Islamic State in Syria are using white phosphorous, according to imagery released on social media. The use of white phosphorous, in and of itself, is not prohibited in war, but it is subject to restrictions on how and where it can be used. White phosphorous rounds can be used to provide smoke or illumination, but international law prohibits their use as incendiary weapons or on densely populated areas. A spokesman for the U.S.-led anti-Islamic State coalition wouldnt address the specifics of white phosphorus use in Syria except to say that the U.S. uses it in accordance with international law.

Inner circles. Secretary of Defense James Mattis is staffing up his inner circle with veterans of Palantir, the tech company that makes intelligence software for the Pentagon. Politico reports that three former Palantir employees, Anthony DeMartino, Sally Donnelly, and Justin Mikolay, now work as advisors and assistants to Mattis. Palantir software, which allows users to sift through vast troves of data to find patterns and connections, proved a popular alternative to the Armys Distributed Common Ground System, setting up a clash between the service and the Silicon Valley company over contract awards. Palantir founder Peter Thiel has served as an advisor and outspoken supporter of President Trump, dating back to the 2016 presidential campaign.

Buyers remorse. Congressional Democrats are no longer so fond of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, with Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) saying Hes not the person who I thought I was voting for. Politico reports that Democrats initially warmed to the idea of Kelly, who came highly recommended by the likes of former Obama administration Defense Secretary Robert Gates, as a possible moderating force against Trump. Instead, Kelly has proved to be an enthusiastic supporter of President Trumps controversial immigration policies, ranging from the travel ban on six predominantly Muslim countries to deportations of undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

Photo Credit NOORULLAH SHIRZADA/AFP/Getty Images

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SitRep: Another Week at War US Convoy Hit in Afghanistan; US Losses; New Somalia Strike - Foreign Policy (blog)