
US drops 'largest non-nuclear bomb' in Afghanistan - vs4vijay
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/gbu-43b-mother-of-all-bombs-massive-ordnance-air-blast-afghanistan-isis-a7682996.html
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provost
The title is inaccurate. This is known as the Mother-of-all-bombs (MOAB
unofficially, or GBU 43/B officially). For people who like comparisons, Russia
tested the Father-of-all-Bombs in 2007, which is believed to be 4x more
powerful. The FOAB is a thermobaric explosive that offers certain advantages
over common explosives.

More info here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_of_All_Bombs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_of_All_Bombs)

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mod
Perhaps should include "in the US' arsenal", or "ever dropped"

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oliwarner
Or just " _their_ largest..."

I don't think it's so inaccurate it should be flagged. It's implicit. Why
would the US be dropping Russia's bombs?

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3131s
I seriously doubt that's why HN posters flagged this article.

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dmingoddd
You know they're not going to say, oh there was also a village there with
about only 250 mountain people living in it. Hey sorry buddy, you, your
children, your goats all die today cause the man in the suit said so. Because
they want to push this narrative of ISIS being the really bad guys that need
to be killed so you guys be scared of them, we'll take them out for you. These
politicians are incapable and uninterested in solving real problems so you
take the easy way make deamons and keep fighting them -- war is good money,
the politicians can look good fighting the bad guys while not doing anything
really and the peoples minds are occupied by this conflict so they don't
question you too much. I hate ISIS as much as the next guy, but that doesn't
mean these guys are the good guys.

Just replace the name of Afghanistan with with Australia, America or any other
country you can think of. Better yet, Saudi Arabia cause that will easily fit
with some peoples world view. The first question that I get in my head is. How
is this even legal? other than the fact that.. Yea We've got the money and the
resources and you poor fella wont be able to hit us back in your dreams, ever.
So take that!

I just get a feeling that somehow, non-english speaking, non-white people are
not as equal as others and for some people the're doing a favor to them
treating them as humans. This is not in the philosophical debaty sense, but in
the real tactical sense. You want to throw a bomb at Hiroshima, yea kill a
million people and end the war. Today lets drop bombs on some third world
country. The great leader is always doing something worthy of praise. How is
this different from some crazy north Korean dictator other than more savvy and
politically correct propoganda on one side and not on the other. Just cause
the US is a democracy this is valid? Cause they are so powerful they can do
this and no one will question them... What if some other "Bad" guy did it.
What if Putin is doing this kind of stuff. Killing of people is killing of
people. This is like taking a shotgun to kill a rat. Sure you'll kill it but
you're probably insane.

Just imagine the US as one person and Afghanistan as another person. The first
guy goes like here dude, take a punch on the face, there was a fly sitting
there I was just trying to kill it. Also, I'll keep punching you to kill flies
whether you're sleeping or awake, whether you like it or not.

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sharun
What goes through the minds of the people at the Pentagon who release such
info? Do they see this as some achievement?

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snowpanda
What makes you think taking out ISIS is not an achievement?

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canadian_voter
They got all of ISIS with one bomb? Good job, promotions all around.

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snowpanda
Semantics...

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mankash666
I'm ALL for taking out ISIS. But, with carpet bombing huge areas, the
likelihood of unintended collateral damage is very high. Which brings us to
the general attitude of the U.S. in war - "When it comes to innocent lives,
only U.S. lives matter!!"

There's ZERO chance that the U.S. would tolerate collateral damage on it's own
citizens in the name of getting ISIS, so why accept the possibility of non-
American causalities?

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vgprice
Seems it was an isolated mountain tunnel system only inhabited by ISIS. No
real objections to me from that.

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zdean
1\. "Only inhabited by ISIS" \- Really? Says who? There were no villages or
civilians within the kill perimeter?

2\. What's the aftermath of a 21,000 pound munition on the environment and
resources of the region. Do a google search for the impact of bombing in Iraq,
Afghanistan, etc on local cancer rates.

Maybe you still don't object...but at least we can be clearer on the true
impact of the bombing.

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gozur88
I would think it would be pretty easy to verify the absence of villages within
a mile. And this isn't the type of weapon that causes cancer.

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boomboomsubban
How would you verify it then? Do you have the coordinates for where the bomb
dropped and recent maps of the area? A year ago we said that all ISIL soldiers
had been removed from the area, verification seems tricky.

You don't think blowing bits of a building in a twenty mile radius would cause
cancer?

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newdayrising
Do you think letting ISIS operate freely in the region is better than the
speculative notion that building debris will cause cancer someday? Do you
think the US should merely inform the local governments and hope they will do
something?

Regardless, I agree that the US should never get involved in the Middle East
militarily. There is NO way to prevent civilian deaths, there is no way to
prevent people on the Left from reducing ALL military action to American
imperialism.

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boomboomsubban
I didn't realize dropping this bomb or doing nothing were the only possible
options, the whole 26 day campaign with two wounded US soldiers they did last
year led me to believe there may be more options.

What reason is there for a war of aggression beyond imperialism?

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gozur88
I don't think it's reasonable to characterize the war in Afghanistan as
"imperialism".

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boomboomsubban
So what do you call a war who's aim is to install a friendly government and
take over some amount of the nation's sovereignty?

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gozur88
I suppose I would call it that if that were the aim of the war.

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boomboomsubban
Our goal was removing the Taliban, and taking the right to police residents of
the country, particularly Bin Laden, without the need of jurisprudence. Set up
a friendly government, take over sovereign right. What am I missing here?

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gozur88
Okay. What does that have to do with "war of aggression" and "imperialism". We
weren't there on a lark.

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boomboomsubban
Starting the war for those aims is a war of aggression, removing the Taliban
is setting up a friendly government, removing their right to police is a
removal of sovereignty.

Really confused what you're going on about, you keep saying I'm wrong but
don't try to say why.

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gozur88
>Starting the war for those aims is a war of aggression...

No it isn't. That's not at all true.

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boomboomsubban
Yeah, it is. There's millennia of precedent here and I'm not going any further
to argue against "nuh-uh."

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gozur88
Precedent? This isn't a court case. I begin to see the problem here: You're
misapplying a historical template. This isn't 19th Century British Empire -
the US had an iron-clad _casus belli_ in Afghanistan, and to ignore that is to
completely mischaracterize the situation.

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boomboomsubban
"This isn't a court case, they had an iron-clad case for war." The only point
of a cassus belli is to justify your war of aggression, if someone declares
war on you the case for it is clear.

And no, the cassus belli was not iron-clad. There are only three legal ones
under current law. Defense, defense of an ally, and a UN approval. First two
don't work, Afghanistan hadn't declared any wars, and the third never
happened.

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matthewmcg
Various sources are reporting a $16M unit cost for this bomb (excluding R&D
costs). That's more than half the unit cost of the C-130 aircraft that
delivers it.

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pacificmint
It's also about 600 times as much as the cost for a Daisy Cutter, which it
sorta replaces. (According to [1] those cost $27,000)

[1]
[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/nov/07/afghanistan.te...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/nov/07/afghanistan.terrorism6)

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yodsanklai
I wonder what is the environmental impact of such a bomb.

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zdean
The cancer rates in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc have skyrocketed in the past
decades. Some believe it's tied to the relentless bombings:

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/dec/14/iraq.military](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/dec/14/iraq.military)

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MacsHeadroom
Cancer screening has also skyrocketed and cancer is up in lots of places
without active conflict.

I don't mean to minimize the actual destructive effects of war. But the
evidence for cancer as being among them is far from conclusive.

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zdean
Cancer screening skyrocketing doesn't account for a skyrocketing rate of
cancer...it would simply capture more of the absolute number.

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mannykannot
Towards the end of WW2, Britain's 617 Squadron ("Dambusters") used 10-ton
Grand Slam bombs against massive concrete fortifications, such as U-boat pens,
and structures, such as bridges, that could be destabilized by underground
explosions. Because they were designed to penetrate concrete, they probably
had more steel and less explosive than this bomb.

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mankash666
Because, when it comes to civilian lives or collateral damage, only U.S. lives
matter!!!

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snowpanda
OP why did you leave out the rest of the title?

> US drops 'largest non-nuclear bomb' in Afghanistan in area populated by Isis
> members

Kind of leaving a very important detail out here.

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bitJericho
Because for the US, all areas of Afghanistan bombed are populated by ISIS.

