Trump’s Big Bomb Let’s hope the right people noticed this blast against Islamic State.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-big-bomb-1492125722
As demonstration effects go, it would be hard to top the bomb the U.S. dropped Thursday on Islamic State in Afghanistan. The 21,000 pound GBU-43, or “mother of all bombs,” landed on Islamic State installations in eastern Afghanistan.
What happened at the receiving end of the bomb isn’t known, nor would White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer say whether President Trump personally gave authorization, which isn’t needed to deploy the GBU-43. But like the 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles that struck a Syrian airfield last week, the right people no doubt noticed this display of American purpose.
At the top of the list would be Islamic State, which Mr. Trump has promised to eliminate. The terrorist group has seized territory in Afghanistan’s Nangahar Province, near the border with Pakistan. The Afghan army, supported by the U.S., has taken significant losses in its attempt to dislodge ISIS. The commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, called the GBU-43 smart bomb the “right munition” to “maintain momentum” against ISIS.
Momentum is an important concept in this fight. The armed forces of Iraq, for example, are on the brink of recovering Mosul from Islamic State and have taken huge casualties to do so. But it will be difficult to consolidate an achievement like that unless other nations are willing to make similar commitments to support the fight, whether in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan or Yemen.
Momentum routinely wilts beneath the politics and factions across the Middle East. The strike against Syria and now the use in Afghanistan of the biggest non-nuclear bomb in the active U.S. arsenal makes clear America’s resolve to our allies. Islamic State won’t be defeated without buy-in from those allies.
We may also assume that the missile-launching crowd in Pyongyang noticed the deployment of the GBU-43. Far be it from us to suggest that the U.S. drop one on a North Korean nuclear factory. But in the space of a week, Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, Bashar Assad, Xi Jinping and ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, wherever he is hiding, have learned that the U.S. considers it to be in its interest to push back hard against its adversaries’ aggression.
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