The recent failure of Trump’s missile salvo has been the talk of the week of pretty much every single international media source.
Even the recent poll conducted by the Gallup Institute shows that Americans’ support for the military strikes against Syria has hit rock bottom when compared with their reactions to previous US military actions. In the list of all US military operations in foreign countries conducted over the last four decades only the military intervention in Libya in 2011 provoked more criticism among Americans, with just 47% approving of it back when it was started. Tens of other US military campaigns, from Grenada to the ongoing struggle against ISIS received higher approval rates from American citizens in comparison with the latest Washington’s actions in Syria.
What is curious is that a number of independent media sources have published images of Pentagon’s cruise missile that hit the ground some 25 miles from the designated target. Judging by their appearance, the Tomahawk simply received no physical damage before hitting the ground and wore no marks that could imply that they were hit by any sort of anti-missiles ordinance. According to US military experts, the better part of the rockets fired had their guidance systems jammed by some sort of “external interference”, which implies that Russia’s electronic warfare systems were used to bring the rockets down. This, in particular, has been pointed out by the editor-in-chief of Veterans Today, Gordon Duff a war veteran with decades of service behind his back. In his article he claims that his analysis was confirmed by Syria’s special services, which he contacted.
Another possible confirmation of this version is the fact that Russians were capable of shutting down all missile defense system of the USS Donald Cook with their advanced electronic warfare capabilities back in 2014 in the Black Sea. Back in the day, some experts were pointing out that America was lucky not to be forced to tow its destroyers home.
By the way, according to some media sources, two Russia’s Il-20 planes carrying advanced jamming systems have recently been deployed at the Khmeimim air base in Syria. It’s believed that such planes are capable of interfering with the military communication equipment used by US intelligence services, preventing the transfer of reconnaissance data from such satellites as Lacrosse and Onyx, rendering both AWACS and Sentinel early warning and control planes blind.
Under those circumstances, in order to somehow redeem the US military prestige, a couple of days ago President Trump ordered to unleash for the first time ever the so-called massive ordnance air blast bomb GBU-43/B in the Nangarhar province of eastern Afghanistan, that is also known as the “mother of all bombs.” With a mass of almost 10 tons, GBU-43/B is designed to destroy underground facilities and communication systems. It was produced back in 2003 and at that time the media would consider it to be the most powerful non-nuclear aerial bomb in the world. Its explosion is equivalent to 11 tons of TNT, while the blast radius is reported to be almost a mile wide.
Donald Trump would describe the drop of a GBU-43/B on Afghanistan as a “very successful mission,” adding that the US military has once again proven that they’re the best in the world.
It sounded pretty much like Trump’s take on Khrushchev’s promise to show the world Kuzma’s Mother that was made some six decades ago. Back then this Soviet leader announced USSR’s readiness to “catch up and then overtake the United States.”
However, the military bravado on Trump’s part didn’t produce the desired result. It’s been announced by the former Afghan leader Hamid Karzai, who led the country for twelve years, that the US is not engaged in anti-terrorist activities in in Afghanistan, instead Washington using it as the testing grounds for new highly dangerous weapons. This respected politician and a former US ally has condemned the course of actions that Washington chose to take.
A former CIA and NSA official Edward Snowden has also criticized the Pentagon for its mindless use of really expensive weapons in Syria and Afghanistan. He would note in his Twitter that:
The bomb dropped today in the middle of nowhere, Afghanistan, cost $314,000,000.
Those mujahedeen tunnel networks we’re bombing in Afghanistan? We paid for them.
Assessing the “effectiveness” of this recent “US bomb strike” in Afghanistan, which, according to Pentagon, resulted in the deaths of 36 terrorist fighters some analysts would joke that, based on the size of the bomb, it seems that it simply crushed them by its weight. Given the cost of this device, it turns out that it takes almost a million dollars for the US government to kill one ISIS militant.
Trump’s euphoria about the alleged finesse of the US military has already been stomped by a number of Western media sources that would remind the world that the American “mother of all bombs” has already been overshadowed by Russia’s “father of all bombs”. Thus, the Business Insider would remind us that the most powerful bomb in the world today is a Russian aviation thermobaric bomb of increased power, which, however, has not been used to this date in action. It is known that during the tests conducted back in 2007 the “father” produced a blast equivalent to equivalent to 44 tons of TNT, which means that Russia’s bomb is four times more powerful that the one Trump praised so much.
Against the backdrop of the recent scandalous and groundless comparison of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with Hitler that was made by the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer who pointed out that the latter “did not drop chemical bombs on its own people,” one could resist the question about who should we compare Donald Trump with these days? Does the use of the new super-powerful weapons in Afghanistan is reminiscent in any way to the steps Truman took back in 1945, unleashing nuclear devices against the towns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in a desperate attempt to put an end to the resistance of the Japanese army?
It curious that no government in this world has ever used such super-powerful weapons in actual combat, although the White House keeps on describing other states as “aggressors”.
Martin Berger is a freelance journalist and geopolitical analyst, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”