Thursday, April 20, 2017

Bombs Not Bridges

Do you know how much that big bomb President Trump dropped on Afghanistan cost? According to the New York Times, $16 million.

Around 8 p.m. Afghan time, the United States had dropped a 21,600-pound, $16 million bomb on Asadkhel, a tiny village nestled between two forested hills, to attack a decades-old tunnel system that was being used by fighters claiming allegiance to the Iraq- and Syria-based Islamic State.
--New York Times

What kind of bridge could you build for $16 million?
by Martin Provensen

My wife recently returned from a trip to Viet Nam, where she toured some of the 25 miles of tunnels near Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City).  Her first words, when she got off the plane were, "There was no way we could have won that war."  Some of those tunnel systems were several stories deep, housing hospitals and everything but a spa. Even if we had a big bertha bomb, we could never have destroyed the tunnel system the Viet Cong had built because, well, they lived there and we did not.

They just kept building new tunnels.
Martin Provensen

Afghanistan has been at war for 40 years, at least, or I should said, "lately."
Does President Trump really think we can "bomb the shit out of ISIS" and that would change anything?

Pink Lake, Obadiah Youngblood

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