Recently, as part of the seemingly endless war in Afghanistan, the US military dropped a massive, 22,000 lb munition on an ISIS tunnel complex. The munition, formally named GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB), but happily dubbed “Mother Of All Bombs” by the war crowd, was designed and built for specific targets: deep and/or hardened tunnel complexes, bunkers and other enemy facilities. The mission was reported as a success, but that’s secondary to the viral glee that has engulfed the news and social media over the bomb’s use.

Fox and Friends host Ainsley Earhardt, when viewing a clip of the explosion, said “That is what freedom looks like, that’s the Red, White and Blue.” Geraldo Rivera commented “one of my favorite things in the 16 years I’ve been here at Fox News is watching bombs drop on bad guys.”

While I don’t hold a whit of sympathy or empathy for the savages of ISIS, it is a fact that we’ve been dropping bombs on them for years, and none of those bombs have elicited the gushing joy that this big boom has, in the press, on social media, and in the blogosphere.

What gives?

Apart from it being the first use of the much-hyped MOAB since its first deployment in 2008 (when it replaced the not-quite-as-massive 15,000 lb BLU-82B “Daisy Cutter” in service since Viet Nam), there’s something very viscerally satisfying about a really big boom. We see it in our joy over Independence Day fireworks, we see it in the way explosions make us cackle with glee, and we feel it when the bad guys are “taken out” in truly devastating fashion rather than with more mundane means.

Its use did achieve a military goal, but I cannot help but think that the publicizing and hype were all about propaganda and public relations. All of a sudden, people are preening about Trump being a “real President,” and how ISIS knows we mean business now. Yes, the usual suspects are making mewling noise about how much the bomb cost, but apart from the inaccuracy of their claims, I don’t recall much whinging about bomb and drone costs during Obama’s tenure, so forgive me if I dismiss those complaints as nothing more than partisan hackery.

Presumably, the 26,000 bombs that Obama dropped in 2016 didn’t convey this message to ISIS, as if one big-ass (excuse me, Mother Of All Bombs) bomb is a bigger message than 26,000 boring normal-sized bombs. Presumably, size does matter, one really big bomb means more than thousands of medium bombs, and the symbolism of really blowing the tits off a particular tunnel complex trumps (pun intended, obviously) a protracted bombing campaign of lesser epic-ness.

Yes, it’s being sold as “we really scared the bejeezus out of the ISIS fanatics with the MOAB,” but in truth the hype over the bomb (again – it has a specific military purpose, but that’s irrelevant to this discussion) is more for Americans than radical Islamic fanatics. It’s meant to pump us up, to tell us we are winning, to appeal to the lizard part of our brains that makes us giggle like schoolgirls when stuff goes BOOM!, to portray our new president as the biggest BSD in the world.

It’s as much propaganda and public relations for American audiences as anything else. And it’s a great big smashing success. Again, pun intended. It has destroyed rational thought, it has deflected the debate over what we’re still doing in Afghanistan in the first place, or whether continuing the current form of military mission against ISIS is advisable or wise. It’s a “bigger and better” version of wag-the-dog. And it makes those of us who are tired of our endless foreign wars sad, because it (along with the recent Tomahawk strikes against Assad’s forces in Syria) has enthralled many anti-war people and drawn them onto the blow-shit-up bandwagon.

Bombs are fun. Watching stuff explode is fun. But, war isn’t about fun, it’s about achieving goals and objectives. We mustn’t let ourselves be distracted by big bangs and “what freedom looks like” nonsense in our assessment of whether our foreign wars are worth prosecuting.

• About the Author

About Peter Venetoklis

I am twice-retired, a former rocket engineer and a former small business owner. At the very least, it makes for interesting party conversation. I'm also a life-long libertarian, I engage in an expanse of entertainments, and I squabble for sport.

Nowadays, I spend a good bit of my time arguing politics and editing this website.

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