(Photo: Department of Defense)
Trump was not joking in 2015 when he said he was going to “quickly and decisively bomb the hell out of ISIS.” On Thursday April 13, the United States struck Afghanistan with the most powerful non-nuclear bomb ever used in battle. With the nickname ‘mother of all bombs”, the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB) is 21,600 pounds and 30 feet long. According to US officials, the target was an ISIS cave in the Achin district of the Nangarhar province.
Press secretary Sean Spicer said about the bomb, “The United States takes the fight against ISIS very seriously and in order to defeat the group we must deny them operational space, which we did.” President Trump is satisfied with the strike, but refused to say whether or not he approved the strike and commented, “Everybody knows exactly what happens. So, what I do is authorize our military.”
The MOAB was first developed in 2003 in attempts to intimidate Saddam Hussein, but it was never actually used in Iraq. One of these bombs costs about $16 million and the military has spent an estimated $314 million on them so far.
While Trump and Spicer feel confident in Thursday’s move, California representative Jackie Speier feels differently about increased involvement in Afghanistan. She voices, “We are escalating in an area I think we should be de-escalating in. Coupled with what happened in Yemen, what happened in Syria, these are efforts that are made to suggest that we will be engaging in wars in three different countries simultaneously."
Alanna Shingler Staff Reporter