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Republican Bombs Are Bad, M’kay?
The stakes were upped Thursday when the US military dropped a MOAB on ISIS forces in eastern Afghanistan. Nicknamed the “Mother Of All Bombs,” the MOAB is the largest non-nuclear weapon ever used in combat, weighing 22,000 pounds and filled with 18,700 pounds of H6 explosive.
The MOAB creates explosive shockwaves through overpressure, especially in caves and canyons. Waves of pressure enter the narrow spaces, killing people and collapsing tunnels. This made the bomb ideal to use against the ISIS tunnel complex in the Nangahar province. Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., US commander in Afghanistan, said, “This is the right munition to reduce these obstacles and maintain the momentum of our offensive.” But what do generals know about military tactics compared to our nation’s journalists?
“The U.S. military has targeted similar complexes and dropped tens of thousands of bombs in Afghanistan, raising the question of why a bomb of this size was needed Thursday.” — Washington Post
“Some national security experts said that Mr. Trump and the Pentagon risked inflaming anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world with their approach to fighting the Islamic State.” — New York Times
“Like the Syria strike, use of the monster munition in Afghanistan is more symbolic than tactical, because it is unlikely to change the course of America’s longest war.” — Los Angeles Times
Progressives’ response on Twitter was even worse:
Dear @realDonaldTrump:
How does dropping #MOAB fit into a larger Afghanistan strategy?
We can’t kill our way to victory.
– The people
— igorvolsky (@igorvolsky) April 13, 2017
It’s grotesque to call a killing device, the “Mother of All Bombs.” The #MOAB is the epitome of lethal patriarchy.
— Eric Stoller (@EricStoller) April 13, 2017
Criticizing a bomb for being too lethal is like criticizing a cherry fritter for being too delicious.
The lefties were fine when Obama was droning Yemeni wedding receptions and US military deaths in Afghanistan quadrupled over the Bush years. But now that President Trump is C-in-C, fighting terrorism is a cruel thing.
The main problem critics have with the MOAB is that it’s a Republican bomb. It was designed under George W. Bush and first used by Donald Trump. SEAL Team Six shooting up Osama’s compound made progressives feel butch, but ordnance that kills exponentially more terrorists is vulgar.
What the left wants is a kinder, gentler bomb, dropped by a thoughtful, sensitive President. A weapon with a streamlined design that looks good staged in a loft between an Eames chair and a midcentury modern liquor cabinet handmade with reclaimed lumber. An explosive that would be dropped ironically as a Wes Anderson soundtrack plays in the background. A bomb that will shower hashtags, emojis, and social justice across Balochistan.
The US military exists to kill people and break things. And if America is ever going to defeat ISIS, the Twitter hipsters shouldn’t complain that they’re doing their job too well.
Published in Military
And evidence that this may have been mostly a message to the NK FatBoy …
By way of comparison, the WWII Grand Slam also weighed 22,000 pounds, but contained only 9100 pounds of Torpex. (H6 replaced Torpex. H6 is more stable.) So, MOAB has a casing that weighs 3300 pounds as opposed to the Grand Slam’s 11,900. Grand Slam could penetrate 140 feet of earth. Assuming MOAB is similar, you can see the amount of engineering going into designing the casing.
Seawriter
The situation cannot change.
The climate cannot change.
The only thing that can change is our living, breathing Constitution.
… and xyr pronouns.
BTW I don’t know where that 18K / 11K thing came from. It has to be the other way around.
So here’s the deal:
If climate scientists, who are experts in their field, state that global warming is real and man-made, then all argument and discussion must cease immediately. Because experts.
If generals decide to drop a huge bomb on hippies, er, jihadis in a desert somewhere, sparing a bunch of Americans the task of going into tunnels and shooting bad guys in morally-acceptable kilogram equivalents of destruction, i.e. “bullets”, then we must question their wisdom and approach in its entirety.
Because Progressives. Where logic and consistency take a happy holiday, you’ll find America’s dearest snowflakes lounging about with their phones, Twitterizing about things they themselves cannot do, about risks they will never, ever have to take, and immersing themselves, deeply, into their own reeking baths of self-satisfaction.
No, the MOAB is specifically not a penetrator. In fact, the retronym is Massive Ordnance Air Blast. It’s designed to create an overpressure wave that will reach into caves and fortifications. That’s the effect that lots of smaller munitions can’t create, since they won’t all explode at the same time/place.
Time will tell, but I have the sneaking suspicion that Trump’s bombing is designed more for the benefit of some of his supporters more than for foreign policy. He made a decent Supreme Court nomination, and by putting out a fake budget that included spending cuts he gave signs that he was going to be more of a limited-government conservative than anyone had expected. But now he needs to get back to being an establishment, big government person. He likes to win, and he can find allies in the GOP Establishment who will help him do that. There aren’t enough of the limited government conservatives to help him get wins. He doesn’t dare betray all of his supporters among them, but an aggressive foreign policy, or at least the appearance of one, will appease the fraction of them for whom bombing things is more important than limited government, anyway. It will at least distract them from the failure to reform health care.
Exactly. It makes the betrayals of the Make America Great Again agenda more palatable.
Are those three tweets for real? They seem too clichéd, like they’re trolling us with the words of a brain-dead leftist who is so far gone that he/she/it doesn’t realize how stupid they sound. (yes, “he/she/it” was intentionally sarcastic).
Are you assuming they only have three genders? I am outraged!
I actually I think they may be doing a little propaganda here. Say you are Assad and just had 60 cruise missiles drop on your head. Well that was not too bad, may have even scored some sympathy points with the internationals. Then a week later you see one of these things fall on ISIS heads. You can’t help but wonder if there are 60 or so of these things sitting some place with your name on them. Might be smart to cool your roll a bit.
I love that NYT line. I tell my eighth-grade historians that they are NOT ALLOWED to use “some”. Of course “some national-security experts” questioned the decision. “Some” of any group can be relied upon to say anything. But “five people on the NYT speed-dial” doesn’t sound as convincing.
Speaking of eighth-graders: if a pupil continually misbehaves, taking action will certainly antagonise that pupil, but not taking action sends completely the wrong signals to the class. Killing terrorists may well antagonise the survivors, but how does it help to let them carry on? Are they going to cease through sheer gratitude?
“We can’t kill our way to victory.” Don’t be stupid, of course we can. Although I’m prepared to accept that Nazi Germany would have been defeated by Twitter, had it existed. And I do wish people would stop claiming to speak for “the people.” Not in my name, mate. (I feel the same about LGBT ‘leaders’).
As for that guy in London… I can’t take the phrase “lethal patriarchy” seriously, but, if women can be frontline troops, bombs can be female. And I assume he’s forgotten the first Gulf War.
I have finally realised that progressives are disappointed in the world. Progressives are good, and others’ failure to be good creates the problems. But progressives don’t need to change. I actually have some sympathy with this form of Applied Christian Ethics, but it’s poor strategy.
What do you mean? The NYT quote is right there.
Off by an order of magnitude: you made a mistake.
Off by two orders of magnitude: you made a big mistake.
Off by three orders of magnitude: put the calculator down, Euclid — you’ve got no game.
Well, in fairness, it is almost as big just like my personal fortune is almost as big as that of Jeff Bezos…
The bomb, which was used for the first time in combat on Thursday in Afghanistan, can penetrate through 60 meters (200 feet) of enforced concrete and is therefore especially suitable for deployment in contained environments such as caves and bunkers. The U.S. military said that Thursday’s attack targeted an ISIS tunnel complex.
Jon & all,
First, the bomb starts to approach (still a ways to go) tactical nuclear bombs. Of course, there is no radiation. Second, if you are an evil dictator hiding in your bunker (even with 200 feet of concrete between you and daylight) you will get the message that if we know where you are there is a MOAB with your name on it.
Pleasant dreams.
Regards,
Jim
An air burst bomb would be incapable of penetrating 60 feet of concrete. The Grand Slam. which was a penetrator, could only penetrate 20 feet of concrete. The GBU-43 is long and skinny – characteristic of a penetrator, not an air-burst bomb. Look at what it did and what it is. An air burst will not collapse meters of rock. Wikipedia is pretty good for first-cut research, but needs a run through the reality filter before being accepted.
Seawriter
Additional facts may persuade. What you may not be aware is that the CIA hired Bin Laden(!) to build the recently bombed caves for the mujahedeen (think Taliban). Recall that Bin Laden’s family were in construction. So the US (CIA) trained and funded the very person who perpetrated the only mainland attack in US history. That seems like a mistake. And the US (CIA) trained and funded the nascent Taliban that they had to later invade a country to fight. That seems like a mistake. And the US built the military infrastructure (very extensive cave network large enough for 2000 troops) that the third generation of mujahedeen (ISIS) were using. Which is was just bombed. That seems like a mistake.
Every problem 40 years later has roots in US actions. So I repeat…
Johnny Joey’s tweets are the ones that should go viral.
Thank you for your service sir!
http://wikimapia.org/11448002/Tora-Bora-Caves
Well, given that, could you give me some stock market pointers? Knowing what is going to happen in the future so well.
As another man, wiser than me, said:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Errors are always obvious in retrospect. It is always easy to see what was done wrong afterwards. It is rarely that easy when it is happening.
Seawriter
The GBU-57 Massive Ordinance Penetrator penetrates (hence the name) some classified distance through most anything and goes “whumph.”
The GBU-43 Massive Ordinance Air Blast is dropped over something and at a predetermined point above it goes “WHUMPH.”
The difference is partly due to a difference in the payload but mostly due to the muffling effects of penetrating though said classified distance of stuff.
This particular error is easy to see.
Funding bad guys is a fool’s strategy. The US unleashes demons… Then calls the army of demons an “asset.” Then the US reaps what it sowed.
Perci,
The GBU-57 seems most relevant. If you are a fat repulsive deranged tyrant who has caused mass starvation amongst his own people and has murdered more than a few of them (even members of his own family) then you probably think deep concrete encased bunkers are cool. I mean some people would prefer a Manhattan high rise and some would rather have an oceanfront condo but usually this type likes those deep deep concrete bunkers. I have always thought it important to give the customer what they want and in this case, they so richly deserve.
Regards,
Jim
Yeah. Look what helping Stalin in WWII got us. Oh yeah, victory.
Funding bad guys isn’t the fool’s strategy. The fool’s strategy is not keeping them on a short leash. The fool’s strategy is leaving them alone and letting them grow. Bush senior effectively contained Saddam Hussein. Clinton let him off the mat and let him rebuild. Bush Jr, contained al Qeada effectively. He was on the way to taking Iran down. His actions in the Middle East were a big reason why North Korea did not invade South Korea in 2004. We had Iraq won, and the rest of the Middle East controlled. And then that fool Obama let all the bad guys get up and recuperate for eight years.
The best place to fight for our freedom is on the other guy’s turf – not our own soil.
Seawriter
We owe the Russians.
Try to imagine beating Rommel in North Africa if the German troops committed to Operation Barbarossa were still available.
Try to imagine Sicily and Normandy without Stalingrad and Kursk.
Of course, we owe the Russians for other things, too.
The MOAB is not a penetrator in the older classic sense, as in armor piercing. What it creates and what penetrates is an obscenely powerful sound wave. The more dense the material through which it travels, the more efficient it is. Soil is absorbent in this sense, while concrete shielding is more than useless. I get excited just writing about this! We have many more of these bombs, and surely some are on board the Carl Vinson task force right now. So much winning!