On Thursday morning, the United States military announced that it had dropped a GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, often called the Mother Of All Bombs, on ISIS in Afghanistan. It’s the largest non-nuclear bomb in the American arsenal. CNN describes the weapon:

A MOAB is a 21,600-pound, GPS-guided munition that is America's most powerful non-nuclear bomb. The bomb was dropped by an MC-130 aircraft, operated by Air Force Special Operations Command, according to the military sources. They said the target was an ISIS tunnel and cave complex as well as personnel in the Achin district of the Nangarhar province.

The MOAB has been part of the American arsenal since the Iraq War, but it has never been used. The blast radius is up to a mile. According to the military, “The strike was designed to minimize the risk to Afghan and US Forces conducting clearing operations in the area while maximizing the destruction of ISIS-K fighters and facilities.” General John Nicholson, commander of all U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said that ISIS had been hiding in tunnels and caves to avoid normal ordnance, and thus “This is the right munition to reduce these obstacles and maintain the momentum of our offensive against ISIS-K.”

The Department of Defense said that there had been consideration about using the MOAB for months.

The Left is immediately suggesting that this is another Trumpian “distraction” from low approval ratings and confusion in Syria – that he needed something spectacular to distract the media from its focus on supposed chaos inside the Trump administration. The right is celebrating Trump’s supposed willingness to take war to the next level against our enemies – why didn’t Obama use the MOAB?

Dropping the MOAB represents the second major show of force in two weeks for the Trump administration, which launched nearly 60 cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase after an Assad gas attack; the Trump administration has also moved a U.S. aircraft carrier into proximity of North Korea. Trump’s credibility on his willingness to use military force remains strong, even if his credibility on willingness to escalate to full-scale war remains in doubt.