moab or mopping-up

Whilst it is unclear whether the very un-surgical and indiscriminately destructive bombing raid on Cosplay Caliphate caves on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border that Dear Leader authorised was just another costly (that initial figure of three hundred fourteen million dollars was not the price of the single operation but rather the entire arsenal of Massive Ordnance Air Blasts and the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, the untested bunker-busting bombs that have three times the explosives on what was dropped on Thursday) but hollow publicity-stunt, it would do us all some good to stop to reflect on the past four decades of history in the land that’s been called on multiple occasions the graveyard of empires. Fearing the growth of Soviet influence in that country, the US Central Intelligence Agency (under the codename Operation Cyclone) financed and supported the Jihadi resistance to communist ideology and gave rise to the mujahideen directly and its cadet-branches indirectly. Many argue that it was the expense of carrying out the fight to retain a toe-hold in Afghanistan that bankrupted the Soviet Union and precipitated its dissolution. After the success of their proxy-war, the US quickly shifted its interests elsewhere and this sudden abandonment allowed more radical jihadi elements to take control—creating al Qaeda, the Taliban and successor groups.