![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Share the fruits of all our labour
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
I am sorry to have been the vector. It was the first thing I saw when I got back to the internet. I was not happy.
... one can only suppose it was designed to terrorize.
The Boston Globe agrees with you: "Massive weapons like this one are especially useful if what you're looking for is shock and awe — a display of raw military power. Indeed, that seems to be one of the reasons the US military developed MOAB in 2003 . . . Fifteen years later, this same psychological aspect may again be paramount, a way for the Trump administration to send a message to ISIS and its allies: we're coming for you with everything we've got."
(The Globe also uses Boston's North End to demontrate the destructive range of the GBU-43/B. I've been thinking all afternoon of a line I love from Mystery Men (1999): "Totally non-lethal, but totally effective." Only reversed: just because a bomb isn't nuclear doesn't put it automatically in the first rank of go-to options. Doesn't make it a good idea. Doesn't make it all right.)
no subject
Now I feel even more disgusted than I did before.
no subject
I fear he will continue semi-random bombings until they start making his own life worse instead of better.
no subject
I have seen it speculated (and it may be confirmable by now) that the real message of this latest bomb was intended for North Korea; Afghanistan just gets to suffer for it. In which case it certainly isn't working as a deterrent, but as an accelerant it may well be doing the trick.
I fear he will continue semi-random bombings until they start making his own life worse instead of better.
I just worry about how much worse everyone else's lives will need to get in order to reach that point.
no subject
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...
no subject
Expensive posturing, too.
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.
Tactically I agree with you, but since the pattern here seems less "planned objective, mum till zero hour" and more "impulsive bashing of keybord and boasting that nobody could have seen this brilliance coming," I'm not really sure that we're talking from that point of view.
Not sure we need the Overton window moved like that re: the Afghanistan file yet, if at all, though...
I hope so. Once something is used, it becomes conceivable that it can be used again. I don't want this to be normalizing.
no subject
shift the Overton window of acceptable firepower
But yes. This is one of the things I fear, too.
no subject
It is all right to say nothing when you don't have the words for what you feel. Even Wittgenstein famously says so. And he second-guessed everything.
But yes. This is one of the things I fear, too.
*hugs*