Share the fruits of all our labour

[sovay]

At 7:32 pm local time in Afghanistan, it was eleven in the morning in Boston and I was asleep. On the one hand I suppose I might have wanted to be awake for the historic moment of the first combat use of the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast, since it is the largest non-nuclear bomb we have ever dropped on people. (We have one larger, I read; we've never used it. I don't want to feel that might be coming.) On the other, I don't know what difference it would have made, since bombing first and holding press conferences later appears to be the order of the day. I can't even tell when this was planned or decided. If the president was directly involved—coyly, he won't say—I imagine it appealed to him because of the hyperbole. Even if it does nothing but worsen the chaos and raise more anger and shift the Overton window of acceptable firepower, "Mother of All Bombs" sounds tough, right? Definitive. The last word. Somehow I doubt it.

Comments

[asakiyume]

You broke this news for me -_-

I then went and looked at a Washington Post report and read this:

It was unclear what the GBU-43 strike accomplished, as the bomb is not designed to penetrate hardened targets such a bunkers or cave complexes.

... one can only suppose it was designed to terrorize.

[dewline]

Well, these additional details in the first few replies read like dropping this MOAB constitutes a whole lot of a certain kind of supposedly-alpha-male posturing on the part of the bomb-droppers, doesn't it?

To be fair, from a tactical POV, if you actually wanted to get the objective dealt with first, holding the press conference after the fact makes a certain amount of sense.

Not sure we need the Overton window moved like that re: the Afghanistan file yet, if at all, though...

[brigdh]

I have so little to say about this, and the Syria bombing, not because I don't feel anything, but because it's not a feeling that is translating well into words.

shift the Overton window of acceptable firepower

But yes. This is one of the things I fear, too.