A bomb is not a strategy
The fallout of the explosion of the Massive Ordnance Air Blast on ISIS caves in Afghanistan brings widespread handwringing about whether the commander-inchief, President Trump, is unwisely escalating U.S. military force in the Muslim world. We do not question the use of this single fearsome weapon — the Pentagon’s biggest this side of a nuke — in a sparsely populated part of eastern Afghanistan, which, based on the available evidence, seems to have been tailored to meet a specific military objective.
Remember: Last summer, under President Obama, B-52s reappeared in Afghanistan’s skies after a 10-year absence, using 27 bombs and missiles in counterterrorism strikes. Each B-52s carries a total payload three times greater than the MOAB. That’s a difference in methodology, not lethality. According to Gen. John Nicholson, the top American commander in Afghanistan, ISIS terrorists were operating in the area, in a complex of tunnels that were otherwise impenetrable by fighter jet and drone strikes.
Which is why the decision to drop the bomb was made — in the theater of war, not in Washington.
And, lest one is prone to believe the strike caused indiscriminate bloodshed, American troops, working closely with Afghan tribal leaders, coordinated to evacuate civilians from the blast radius before the bomb fell.
But even as we say good riddance to a few dozen murderous terrorists, or at least to the dust they have become, we must scrutinize what is, under Trump, a fast-evolving anti-ISIS strategy.
A steady drumbeat of airstrikes in denser urban areas in Syria, Iraq and Yemen have coincided in recent weeks with a sharp spike in civilian and allied casualties.
Just Thursday, the military announced that a misdirected strike had killed 18 Syrians fighting on our side against ISIS.
War kills. Mistakes happen. And when a terrorist enemy deviously mixes among a non-combatant population, some innocent deaths are the tragic but inevitable side effect.
But there is a larger strategic question at stake: Should such casualties continue or sharply increase in the name of crushing ISIS, the U.S. risks alienating the very population it needs to win over in the long-term.
And the deepening engagement is jarring having been ordered by a President who on the campaign trail warned against Mideast military entanglements, even as he pledged to “bomb the s---” against ISIS.
Meantime, as the Trump administration struggles to send consistent signals about what should happen to Syria’s brutal Bashar Assad, it is reportedly debating heightening the ground conflict against ISIS by, in one scenario, sending up to 50,000 troops to the region. Stop worrying and learn to love the MOAB. But before America backs into a deeper and potentially protracted conflict in the briar patch of the Middle East, demand the President present, with the participation and scrutiny of Congress, a strategy for winning war, and peace.