"Mother of all bombs" drops in Afghanistan — purpose-defeating American disproportion on display again

© 2017 Peter Free

 

18 April 2017

 

 

It is not just ignorance that characterizes American foreign policy . . .

 

There is a lacking sense of proportion, as well.

 

We like to kill people in strategically ineffectual, but dramatic ways. If we can blast or poison the environment in the process, so much the better. Recall the incessant bombing of Vietnam and the accompanying use of Agent Orange.

 

This infatuation with excessive and purpose-defeating destruction persists.

 

 

Take the admittedly minor . . .

 

. . . and therefore nicely representative example of the "mother of all bombs" drop in Afghanistan last week.

 

The thermobaric (conventional) bomb blew an approximately square mile of Afghanistan to shreds. God knows what that explosion did to the local biosphere:

 

 

Thermobaric bombs like the MOAB scatter the explosive fuel like an aerosol, making it possible for them to ignite the surrounding atmosphere.

 

"What it does is basically suck out all of the oxygen and lights the air on fire," Bill Roggio, of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, told the newspaper Air Force Times.

 

© 2017 Richard Conner, What makes MOAB Mother of All Bombs?, DW.com [Deutsche Welle] (14 April 2017)

 

 

An air blast bomb . . . [is] all blast overpressure, which can blow down trees and use the trees themselves as the fragmentation,” Priest says.

 

You’d overpressure the people hiding in the caves there. You’d never find them—it just blows your lungs out of your mouth. It kind of turns you inside out.”

 

© 2017 Larry Geenemeier, What Is the "Mother of All Bombs" That the U.S. Just Dropped on Afghanistan?, Scientific American (13 April 2017) (excerpts)

 

 

Commanding General John Nicholson (naturally) told us that the strike was militarily necessary

 

His extrapolated implication apparently being that we need to physically obliterate offending parts of Afghanistan in order to save them:

 

 

"This was the right weapon against the right target," Gen. John Nicholson, commander for US forces in Afghanistan, told a press conference.

 

Hamdullah Mohib, Afghanistan's ambassador to the United States, said the colossal MOAB was dropped after fighting had intensified over the last week. US and Afghan forces had been unable to advance because ISIS . . . had mined the area with explosives.

 

The rocky landscape is dotted with caves and defensive tunnels, making it easy to hold and hard to attack . . . .

 

[F]ormer President Hamid Karzai accused the United States of using Afghanistan as "a testing ground for new and dangerous weapons."

 

© 2017 James Griffiths, Barbara Starr and Angela Dewan, US military defends dropping 'mother of all bombs' on ISIS in Afghanistan, CNN (14 April 2017) (excerpts)

 

 

Hamid Karzai's criticism is arguably accurate

 

Karzai's perception matches the historical reality presented by Western colonial nations' past and continuing behavior.

 

And today, judging by the United States' frequently demonstrated imperial perspective, Islamic terrorism will take over the world, unless we blow the planet out from under them.

 

Ergo, an expensive (reportedly $16 million) and environmentally damaging 0.011 kiloton explosion to eliminate (reportedly) 36 bad guys hiding in tunnels in Afghanistan's mountains.

 

 

If this were not so clearly strategically ineffectual excess, it would be funny

 

Worthy, say, of an episode on American television's Family Guy.

 

Maybe violence-obsessed (baby prodigy) Stewie could drop the bomb and (anthropomorphic dog) Brian could have his lungs sucked out of his doggie chest.

 

 

How we knew that 36 bad guys were killed is anyone's guess

 

A rational person would surmise that these folks were vaporized or buried deep in tunnel rubble. In other words, impossible to find.

 

Shades of the Vietnam War's imaginary body counts.

 

 

But that's U.S. leadership for you

 

We fabricate stories up to justify whatever abomination we have just foisted on the planet's peoples.

 

And national amnesia helps us evade holding ourselves accountable for past stupidities.

 

 

The moral? — Get a grip

 

Disproportionate responses are not effective American survival strategies.

 

This "mother of all bombs" example is an admittedly minor one. And that's why it is such a good indicator of the casually indulged strategic mindlessness of American policy. "Let's overreact and blow everything up — that'll teach 'em."

 

Not that it has. History demonstrates that bombing people into submission does not work. World War II, for example. Or the Vietnam War. And now throw in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and so on. I haven't seen any of those wars ending. Much less in advancing stated American peace, security, and prosperity policy.

 

The more we continue this weapons-spewing vein, the more that prideful people will resist.

 

Piss off too many of them or noticeably wreck too much of the planet's surface, and we are going to go down. One way or another.

 

Which is why, I suspect, that Constitutional America's founders so mistrusted leaving government to generals, or to people overly influenced by generals.

 

There is something in the (historically predominant) military mindset that prevents it from accurately looking far enough ahead to be evaluated as strategically aware.