The World Is Getting a Taste of the Trump Doctrine
What to make of the sudden jump in "collateral damage" – i.e., the piling up of dead civilians in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Afghanistan, thanks to U.S. airstrikes? Do the out-of-the-blue missile attacks against a Syrian air base last Thursday and this week's deployment of a 21,600-pound, never-before-used "mother of all bombs" in Afghanistan signal that the White House has given the green light for what Donald Trump promised in 2016 – "I would bomb the shit out of ISIS" – with little regard for innocents caught in the blasts?
Based on the results of a lengthy string of attacks, beginning just days after Trump took office in January, it sure looks that way.
Despite his bomb-ISIS outbursts, Trump ran a neo-isolationist electoral campaign, repeatedly slamming Hillary Clinton for her vote in favor of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Thus, his startling bout of muscle-flexing is a sharp departure from his America First posturing. The dropping of the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) in eastern Afghanistan, in the remote hills of Achin District in Nangarhar Province, unleashed a weapon of staggering power, one widely described as the largest non-nuclear explosive device in the entire American arsenal. "The after-effect, the shock wave, not only has physical effects but psychological effects," Col. Cedric Leighton (Ret.), told CNN.
This is not the war on terror but the inhuman and most brutal misuse of our country as a testing ground for new and dangerous weapons," former Afghan President Hamid Karzai wrote in a series of tweets.
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