Yesterday’s attack with the “Mother of All Bombs” (MOAB) by US forces against eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province was done without approval from President Trump, Pentagon officials insist, saying that they believe they didn’t need any such approval.
Officials continue to defend the strike as appropriate and claim it was a success, but the information on the ground is certainly raising doubts about that, with the Afghan government claiming the strike with the largest non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal killed 36 ISIS fighters, and ISIS saying that no one was killed at all in the strike.
The “best case” from the Pentagon’s perspective, the 36 killed all being ISIS, is a pretty dubious result for the deployment of an $18 million bomb. Since larger numbers of ISIS reported killed have never had a lasting impact on the organization, it appears MOAB accomplished little, except for being high-profile.
The big impact was that it terrified a lot of civilians living in the surrounding area, who obviously weren’t told what was happening until well after the fact. This is also going to add to distrust of the US, which 16 years into their occupation of Afghanistan is already in short supply.
What a shocking waste. Nothing more than a really expensive wankjob by an infantile old man itching to play with the Pentagon’s shiniest toys. Could have accomplished the same thing for cheap with a couple of regular bombs & some mortar fire at the right time.
…or maybe we just STOP KILLING people instead? Might work out better overall.
Even if it did kill 36 terrorists, at $450,000 per terrorist it is quite expensive. Why didn’t the US military just used bullets to kill the terrorists when they were counting them?
US troops have carried out a thorough search of all the collapsed tunnels and have verified that the estimate of 36 dead is exactly correct! Trump truly has made the troops great again! .
It’s a bit too quick to write stuff like this, like most stuff in the 24h spin cycles of the modern, quite bizarre media circus. The Afghan governments states now already the number 94. But it doesn’t matter, the bomb was used as demonstration of willingness: announcing tunnels and bunkers are not safe anymore. Perhaps also with an eye on North Korea, even Iran! As global advertisement budgets go: 18 million dollars is rather modest.
If, in fact, the Pentagon is correct in stating that they did not require nor get prior approval from The Donald to use this ordinance, it begs the question whether the Pentagon also feels they don’t need prior approval for using tactical nukes? Donald seems quite comfortable leaving such decisions in the hands of the Pentagon wonks. Perhaps, as rumors indicate, the Prez has been co-opted by the military because he’s way in over his head – and they both know it.
This bomb has been wildly overblown as some kind of super weapon. It has an 11 ton yield. Tactical nukes are in a different class. The smallest yield that can be dialed in on a B61 bomb is .3kt – 30x more than this MOAB. Our old tactical artillery shells were in the 1kt range.
People should really calm down about this thing.
It’s really not the “bomb” that concerns me, it’s the willingness of Trump to allow the generals to basically go unchecked – the reason there is supposed to be a civilian in charge of the Pentagon. I think Trump’s explanation that he’s freeing the generals hands is pure unadulterated BS. I think, and its my opinion, that Trump has released the military from civilian control (his), and make no mistake, Mattis is a general, because Trump thinks that if things go fubar – and they will – that he can throw his hands up and say, “hey, I wasn’t involved…it was the generals.” And I believe it would take all of a New York minute to happen.
The only real problem with the “bomb” that I have is the cost involved to ultimately supposedly kill 36 unidentified humans.
Making comparisons between nuclear weapons and conventional explosives is a dangerous precedence.
If Americans start to come to terms with a comparison they can understand, as you have put it at 30x more, the justification for the use of tactical nuclear weapons has begun.
That effort was already started by the propagandists for use against Iran, but likely dropped as bad propaganda.
Trump: “Everybody knows exactly what happened. What I do is I authorize
my military,” Trump said. “We have the greatest military in the
world and they’ve done a job as usual. So we have given them
total authorization.”
Look at us, we have the biggest penis in the world!
The man child has been taught by the media that bombs mean ratings and kuddos.
He’ll use this tactic whenever he has a political crisis of his own doing.
Had they left the counting to twitter-in-chief he would have easily counted thousands of terrorists. With just 36 for $16 million would not increase the ratings.
It’s more likely that Trump isn’t making any decisions. His generals are but it has to be portrayed as being Trump’s directions. Judging by most of your comments, you probably know that. Too bad hardly anybody else can’t figure it out yet.
This looks like a combat test of a weapon that might be used against North Korea.
It failed.
Maybe against tunnels under his wall?
Failed only from the military bang-for-the-buck perspective. But it would have an enormous psychological impact if used on factories, industrial complexes, utilities & infrastructure targets.
When an air campaign goes on for a couple of months without showing promising results on the ground, the tactics shift to wholesale destruction of industry & infrastructure, as was the case in Libya & Serbia. In the next case which turns out to be difficult, this bomb will be an escalation available to the US to use for attrition against morale and the defender’s destruction tolerance threshold.
It was a vulgar display of terrorist aggression. Just like Hiroshima, the target wasn’t the people beneath the bomb. The true target is the rest of the world. We’re saying ‘look what we can do and there’s nothing you can do to stop it’. The military is exploiting Trump’s reputation as a recklessly unpredictable statesman in a desperate attempt to look strong as the empire implodes. The psychology of the elite in this country is beginning to look more and more like North Korea. Kim Jong-Un must have read the Art of the Deal. In another life he and the Donald might have been lovers in a sadomasochistic relationship. I wonder what there safety word would have been? Perhaps MOAB.
If it helps any, an Afghan Government official states that 94 IS deaths have been confirmed by Afghani troops including Afghan National Police checking the area. Versions of this Associated Press report have been carried by various MSM news sources, quoting Ataullah Khogyani, spokesman for the provincial governor in Nangarhar.
Wikileaks and Edward Snowden report that that cave complex was paid for by the CIA and built by Bin Laden. The site itself is just around twelve miles from Tora Bora.
Strangely enough, Zero Hedge has quoted OneIndia, an Indian news source, that some 500 Pakistani operatives were aiding IS militants there under Pakistani protection, and were also killed.
Who, in his or her right mind, would quote an Indian ‘news’ source?
Like I said, strangely enough…