It’s body count time!
The number of Islamic State fighters killed by the largest non-nuclear bomb ever used in combat by the United States military, dubbed the “mother of all bombs,” has risen to at least 94, according to Afghan officials.
We need a metric for success, so hey, let’s count up the corpses. More corpses, more winning, right? Except that we’ve been through all this before.
My friend Sazz [stderr] fought around the Vietcong tunnels at Cu Chi. I don’t write “he fought in the tunnels” because only a very small number of Americans went down in them; the rest waited up top to see what happened. One of the things he said was that the tunnel complexes were large, but also pretty small and shabby. They weren’t the kind of things Americans would build, with a Burger King and a Starbucks’ 14 stories down, and air conditioning and power generators – they were little hidey holes and they weren’t worth a damn thing to anyone; conqueror or conquered. That’s what the MOAB blew up.
When the invasion of Afghanistan was still brewing, the US marketed the idea that Osama Bin Laden had built gigantic terror complexes under Tora Bora – multi level, hydroelectric powered, and huge. Of course, such complexes did not exist.
They have never existed, unless you’re thinking about the complexes politicians build to hide from their mistakes. The gigantic MOAB probably collapsed some simple dirt tunnels (because ISIS is sure as hell not tunnelling in stone) The Vietcong at Cu Chi didn’t defend the tunnels when the Americans found them: they left and went elsewhere. The ISIS survivors of the MOAB are already gone to elsewhere, and they’ve added a few recruits from the local population, because the Americans have demonstrated what ruthless assholes we can be.
WINNING!
But hey, we’ve got pundits and news anchors fapping to how big the bomb was, so mission accomplished, amIright?
re 1:
exactly. the only purpose of using MOAB was pure distraction. Giving them sights to look at instead of all the shit he’s throwing at us. Toss a grenade at a distant site as distractions from the bigger bombs he’s exploding on our soil. Look at Missouri River in the Dakotas being flooded with leaks from DAPL, and how he’s bombing EPA to prevent our protection, gutting the Park Service in order to lease National Parks to to oil extractors. He sent Tomahawks [irony] to make a fireworks show, then the “big bomb” in Afghanistan to keep us distracted.
As a distraction it was highly effective: you could almost see the slobber running down journalists’ faces as they extolled the virtues of high explosives. Look at how it killed dozens of bad people! Hear the shock that villagers had at the noise! Imagine the virile power possessed by America’s rugged fighting men: you too can have that power if you only commit yourself to extolling the virtues of the hegemony above all else!
In the past two days I’ve heard two news commentators refer – I think both times in reference to the situation with North Korea, but one might have been talking about this – to testosterone. On CNN, it was prefaced with “Sorry, ladies, but…” It’s a dismal state of affairs. Cordelia Fine’s head must be ready to pop off.
Now that the manchild who asked why he couldn’t use nukes has used the largest non-nuke toy in the toybox, what does he get to play with in North Korea?
Let’s see; how would one rate using the MOAB.
Entertainment value: 9 Watching shit getting blown up is great fun. CNN did well.
Visceral satisfaction: 8 Watching shit getting blown up feels good.
Diversion factor: 5 We still want to know what you did, Donald.
Performance of function as a bomb:10 It certainly blows shit up.
Effectiveness: TBD, my guess:3 Dollars per body(?)
That said:
Vietnam is no lesson in this case, and;
If I have the choice, I’ll choose winning just like the Afghan people would. If any of those people we blew up were not part of an organization of murderous zealots, I suppose I should be truly sorry, but 9/11. I hate war, but ‘never again’ means defeating or rehabilitating those who are doing evil. So what’s your solution?
When you have a country that has a fetish for guns and explosions and loses its shit at the sight of men in military uniform, of course you’ll use that to your full advantage.
“So what’s your solution?”
Peace
Another distraction, but $3 isn’t even close at the conservative estimate of $170,000 per bomb, not including operational costs. That’s $1,800 per body at the current body count.
Also, according to some sources, that’s the 2003 price for the first MOAB built to take out Saddam Hussein. According to one account, that would be $270,000 in today’s dollars. If that’s true, then $2,872 per body.
You’ll hear numbers like $16 million per bomb and $314 million for the entire MOAB program. Those numbers are disputed, although the sources disputing those costs seem to want to minimize the cost.
from wikipedia
that of course does not include the support costs of handling shipping and final delivery to the target. so I think the effectiveness may be hard to quantify.
Ideas are not very vulnerable to explosions nor martyrs
uncle frogy
Peace is a good word; I like peace, I’d like to be left in peace, but find it fleeting and mostly a temporary illusion as I sometimes ignore the shit going on. One day I will rest in peace; not that I’ll know it.
Think of all the people who have tried to live in peace, only to have their lives destroyed. The Jews went peacefully to the gas chambers. Black men get beaten or killed for peacefully existing.
The US has killed a great many innocents to make the world a better place, and will certainly kill more. We can self-loath, condemn, make reparations, but they will still be dead, and we will sleep well tonight.
When I ask for solutions, I am serious. I don’t have one, as I know it will take many; so I ask, and flashing the peace sign doesn’t cut it.
@dhabecker, 6:
See how entertaining or satisfying it is if you are the one being blown up.
If it helps, you can be assured that your explosive fiery death was totally intended to kill the mass murderer 1.5 kilometers down the road from you, and you are merely “collateral damage” that inevitably occurs when you use a weapon that kills everyone within 3 kilometers of its target.
Define effectiveness. What goal were you trying to accomplish?
Why not?
Define “winning.” What does “winning” mean? What would it look like?
Only after you have a coherent notion of what winning even means can you even question whether it’s possible.
9/11? You mean the entertaining, viscerally satisfying explosion of the World Trade Center that was justified in the name of “winning,” whatever that means? If any of the people who died on 9/11 weren’t part of a country of imperialistic zealots, I’m sure Al Qaeda would have been truly sorry, but imperialism.
Yes, and “those who are doing evil” are the imperialists— Bush, Obama, Trump, and their supporters.
I’m all for defeating or rehabilitating them, but it takes a thoroughly warped perspective to claim their victims are the real evildoers.
Afghanistan doesn’t look so bad in these old pictures. I think the problem is that America took over the country and put a bunch of Muslim fundamentalists in charge of it on the assumption they’d be our allies against the Soviet Union which would always exist.
So I think we should start by not doing that.
@9, robro:
I don’t think they said it cost $3 per body. They said its “effectiveness” was 3 (whatever that means) and its cost per body was (?).
Still incoherent and still abhorrent but technically innocent of that minor mathematical error.
dhabecker — Yes, peace is a difficult road. It’s much easier to kill your enemy, and there’s no end to it.
@11, dhabecker:
We are talking about 94 (and counting) of them in this very thread! How in the name of fuck can you be so lacking in humanity that you use the victims of oppression to justify exactly that oppression?
By who? Oh, right— by the exact same people who are bombing Afghanistan.
I’m now questioning not only your humanity but also your ability to understand basic logic. How does it make sense to say: “The fact that I’ve killed one person proves murderers exist, so I’m justified in killing another?”
In what way has the US “made the world a better place?”
Everyone who kills innocent people thinks they’re “making the world a better place.” Humans are known for our ability to rationalize any atrocity in order to preserve our self-image as Good People®.
The people we’ve already killed won’t come back to life so let’s kill some more people!
A pity you didn’t have this attitude after 9/11. Funny, how when rich white people are killed, it’s a terrible atrocity that justifies genocide in response but when poor brown people are killed it’s time to forget because hey, they’re not coming back so no need to concern ourselves.
If you will sleep well, that’s because you’re a fundamentally vile person. We may not be able to bring our victims back to life, but we can damn well guarantee you lose sleep over it.
No you’re not. You’re sealioning.
Solutions exist and they have already been presented. That you choose to ignore them is your own failing.
Oh boy! Now we’re getting someplace.
94 innocents? How do we know this?
Entertainment value comes in many forms; horror films and Princess Bride.
Blowing up shit is entertaining, and no, I’d rather not be blown up. Two different things.
I don’t rationalize atrocity, just recognizing what happened.
I’ll sleep well tonight, and so will most Americans, and Japanese, and Germans, and Italians, and Jews, and Vietnamese and many others whose ancestors blood is on our hands, or our ancestors hands. Our history is nasty; we fire-bombed Tokyo, and 100,000 mostly innocents died. Now what? Are we forever evil?
‘Possible’ solutions exist, but usually rely on people acting rationally and within the law, and that’s the problem.
I might be poor and/or brown, or married to someone who is.
I’m Vile? That’s a hateful word which I will ignore.
Happy Easter!
By the way, effectiveness; 3 is a rating, there is no dollar sign. sorry on my punctuation. Somebody got it right.
Peace is nearly impossible with groups like ISIS or the Taliban whose whole ideology revolves around killing everyone who is different from them.
Yes, the US sometimes does terrible things. Pretending that everyone the US is fighting are innocent victims who would be happy to be friends if the US just stopped fighting them is just plain stupid, however.
Pretending that indiscriminately dropping high explosives against an irregular guerilla force will lead to victory is ignoring all the times it’s failed (aka, every time it’s been used).
Seriously, dude? Who claims that all we have to do is stop fighting and ISIS will be friends with us?
It is possible to view this situation realistically and realize that thrashing around and maximizing destruction is not an effective path to peace without believing that thinking happy thoughts is sufficient. You’ve just dropped a classic false dichotomy on us and can expect to be be figuratively eviscerated for it.
dhabecker, #6
If you hadn’t posted again, I would have thought this was parody.
I agree that dropping high explosives on people isn’t a very effective strategy – it’s actually a tacit admission that the US and its allies have lost control on the ground. What I am saying is that full peace will probably be impossible as long as groups like ISIS and Al Quaeda exist. Combating them to some degree will be necessary to protect the lives of US citizens, but that doesn’t mean that the US has to be involved in as many wars as it is.
So they dropped a bomb that indiscriminately kills everyone in a 1mile radius, but they totally know it killed exactly 94 bad dudes and no one else. And the world is stupid enough to believe it.
Is it just me who finds the biblical overtones of this “Moab” acronym deeply distasteful? Particularly given the area of the world it’s being dropped on (okay, so the historical kingdom of Moab was in what is now Jordan, not Afghanistan, but still…).
cartomancer @ # 22: … the biblical overtones of this “Moab” acronym …
Not to mention the more recent middle-Eastern roots of the “mother of all …” phrase in English. It’s not just linguistically that the US has become Saddam Hussein.
Interestingly when the MOAB was given that acronym the mayor of the town of Moab, Utah, wrote a letter to George W. Bush asking for the acronym to be changed. The mayor felt being inadvertently associated with a giant bomb would harm Moab’s tourism efforts. As you can see the request was ignored.