The April 13 strike by US forces in eastern Afghanistan saw the first deployment of the MOAB, the Mother of All Bombs, in a combat situation, dropped against ISIS forces in tunnels. The 22,000 lb pound was much vaunted for its huge size, the biggest non-nuclear weapon in the US arsenal, and presented as a “message” to other nations.
The reality, not so much. Locals report that the MOAB did way less damage than you’d think, noting that there were green trees still standing 100 meters from the center of the blast, with no sign of damage, and that the tunnels the ISIS fighters were within appear all but untouched.
While there was already considerable doubt about the Afghan government’s claims of 96 ISIS having been killed, particularly in the absence of any evidence, locals expressed doubts that the strike had killed anyone at all. There certainly were no deaths on the surface, and with the tunnels intact, the Pentagon’s decision to rule out checking on the death toll may have been deliberate to avoid this reality.
Indeed, the US appears to have been fully aware that the bomb didn’t accomplish anything, and locals say other airstrikes have been happening in the weeks that followed, while ground troops end up trying to root out ISIS forces, exactly as they would’ve had to if the MOAB wasn’t dropped in the first place.
Many residents aren’t too happy about this, saying they believe the US use of the MOAB strike near their homes makes them “pawns” in a false narrative about how well the fight against ISIS is going, even as that fight continues on.
On top of that, a lot of the bodies turning up aren’t ISIS fighters at all, but members of a local “people’s uprising” that are willing to help fight against ISIS, and are really hoping to see ISIS expelled from Nangarhar. That ISIS has been announced expelled multiple times already means many aren’t getting their hopes up, however.
A multi million dollar military industrial complex boondoggle failed?!? Je suis astonished.
Those of you who know me on Facebook and Google Plus will be aware that I said within hours of the MOAB announcement that it wouldn’t harm ISIS at all. And I’m hardly an insider.
Perhaps they’d prefer we nuke them next time.
Actually, they would prefer that you just went home and stayed there.
You make it sound like we went to that dust bowl for no good reason and unprovoked. They brought their terrorism to our shores. You should be telling them to stay home.
If you are stupid enough to believe that 9/11 was brought about by Arabs with knife cutters then you do not have the intellect to make rational decisions. I bet that you even had the gall to vote.
Every other person in the world knows that two small aeroplanes cannot destroy 3 (count them 3 ) huge buildings. Except for the brain dead idiots who make up the American public.
The only thing the Afghans ever did was to tell you to shove your pipeline, they did not want to be a western country.
If you have even an iota of intelligence Google ‘Carpet of gold or carpet of bombs’
”’the oil and gas reserves of Central Asia have been controlled by Russia. The Bush government wanted to change all that”.
But, confronted with Taliban’s refusal to accept U.S. conditions, ”this rationale of energy security changed into a military one”, the authors claim.
”At one moment during the negotiations, the U.S. representatives told the Taliban, ‘either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs’,” Brisard said in an interview in Paris.’ https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/987814ae2c664b38da7583923bb98fffd6fc7655ac89a158d7a1fb272ea28254.jpg
Get a brain.
It’s an airburst weapon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-43/B_MOAB
The story that it was meant to ‘take out the tunnels’ doesn’t really make sense.
It was a PR stunt.
It is by definition, a dumb bomb. Even if it worked perfectly, it would indiscriminately destroy targets up to a radius of 1 mile yet we howl at the use of ‘barrel bombs’ by the Syrian Air Force.
Actually, if we had a watchdog media, someone in the MSM would have asked, ‘what makes this different than a very large barrel bomb?’ But the leashed MSM is well trained.
I can picture Michael Bay starting to drool. MSM taking a cue from Hollywood?
The MOB was ineffective. As such Trump will use the strong one.He himself will unleash one of his terminal stinkies(that is hot putrid air produced in his gut;vulgo dictu: farts).That will be very powerful.
Bertolt Brecht, August 6th. 1945, on hearing the news of atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima; wrote: “megafart” in his diary.
This was supposed to be a message to No Korea US can use MOAB on their hundreds of dug in tunnels (complete with blast doors) with thousands of artillery that can destroy Seoul. Guess No Korea got message they don’t work too well. And we all got message US will HAVE to use a bunch of nukes to stop the artillery destruction of Seoul. Our radiation will only make it uninhabitable for a few hundred years, after all.
The MOAB is an air blast weapon, not a penetrating weapon. Air blast just isn’t all that effective, at least not until it gets to nuclear levels of thousands of tons of TNT equivalent. It was unreasonable to think it would have any vast effect on tunnels. It was show.
murder for show is the definition of terrorism.
Just who is the “enemy” the United States is fighting against in Afghanistan, ISIS, Inc. or the Taliban? This article fails to mention the political response from the Taliban leadership; what gives?
Like Trump’s administration itself, a big, costly dud. The cost was the point; I’m sure it resulted in increased military industrial complex profits, for that’s the ONLY reason the US ever drops a bomb. Whatever else results is just collateral damage.
The 11 ton blast yield of this thing isn’t all that the hype from many made it out to be. That it would destroy everything within a mile radius is a silly fantasy. It would have to be 1000 times more powerful to do that.