The tale of a 2017 bombing raid in the Libyan desert that pitted stealth bombers and 500-pound bombs against 70 ragtag fighters.
I. Target
The B-2 stealth bomber is the world’s most exotic strategic aircraft, a subsonic flying wing meant to be difficult for air defenses to detect—whether by radar or other means—yet capable of carrying nearly the same payload as the massive B-52. It came into service in the late 1990s primarily for use in a potential nuclear war with the Soviet Union, and clearly as a first-strike weapon rather than a retaliatory one. First-strike weapons have destabilizing, not deterrent, effects. It is probably just as well that the stealth bomber was not quite as stealthy as it was meant to be, and was so expensive—at $2.1 billion each—that only 21 were built before Congress refused to pay for more. Nineteen of them are now stationed close to the geographic center of the contiguous United States, in the desolate farmland of central Missouri, at Whiteman Air Force Base. They are part of the 509th Bomb Wing, and until recently were commanded by Brigadier General Paul W. Tibbets IV, whose grandfather dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. B-2 bombers are still primarily regarded as a nuclear-delivery system, meaning that their crews are by selection the sort of men and women capable of defining success as a precisely flown sortie at the outset of mass annihilation. No one should doubt that, if given the order to launch a nuclear attack, these crews would carry it out. In the meantime, they have occasionally flown missions of a different sort—make-work projects such as saber rattling over the Korean peninsula, and the opening salvos in Serbia, Afghanistan, and Iraq—to tactical advantage without American discomfort.
Bernard Lewis, who passed away recently, was a doyen of Ottoman and Arab history. In his work, he explained why Muslims have shared an uneasy relationship with modernity and the West Bernard Lewis (1916-2018), the renowned American scholar of Islamic and Middle Eastern history, passed away recently at 102. He will be remembered for his penetrating insight into the Ottoman Turkish and Arab history. He coined the term “clash of civilisations”, which later became famous in an essay for The Atlantic magazine in 1990. Lewis was one of the illustrious alumni of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Born in a Jewish family in London in 1916, he grew up through times when Islam had ceased to be a factor in global discourse.
/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-mco.s3.amazonaws.com/public/CSP4KOC5ANGBNNYZETLLKXHQQM.jpg)
/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-mco.s3.amazonaws.com/public/JKW2ZZUC4NBCND5QHXFUHP6Z2A.jpg)
/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-mco.s3.amazonaws.com/public/6UVNMDWNEZFNFFH5TXJBFUEW5Q.jpg)
