Open in app

Sign in

Write

Sign in

The Weekly Arc: April 14, 2017

Welcome to Arc’s newsletter, sent out once per week, highlighting the best and most interesting stories from around the web.

Arc Digital
Arc Digital
10 min readApr 16, 2017

--

Saturday

We have had to release this edition of “The Weekly Arc” on a Saturday rather than Friday, our regular release date. Sorry for the change this week, but we had to sandwich it between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

North Korea

A North Korean ballistic missile “blew up almost immediately” after it was fired on Sunday morning, U.S. military officials said, less than a day after leader Kim Jong Un paraded a never-before-seen long-range ballistic missile through the streets of Pyongyang. …

The launch was seen as a sign of North Korea’s determination to push ahead with its weapons program even after U.S. President Donald Trump warned Pyongyang against any bellicose behavior, and the U.S. sent an aircraft carrier group into the waters around the Korean Peninsula. — The Wall Street Journal

MOAB

When the so-called Mother of All Bombs was first tested, in 2003, the largest conventional weapon in the United States arsenal set off a mushroom cloud visible for twenty miles. The potential damage from the twenty-two-thousand-pound bomb was so vast that the Pentagon ordered a legal review to insure that the device wouldn’t be deemed an indiscriminate killer under the Law of Armed Conflict, the body of law that regulates behavior during wartime. The moab was compared to a small nuclear weapon. It’s so large that no U.S. warplane is big enough to drop it: it has to be offloaded from the rear of a cargo plane, with the help of a parachute.

“Although the moab weapon leaves a large footprint, it is discriminate and requires a deliberate launching toward the target,” the Pentagon report concluded. “It is expected that the weapon will have a substantial psychological effect on those who witness its use.”

Fourteen years after it was deemed ready to use, the U.S. unleashed the moab for the first time in combat on Thursday, at 7:32 p.m., against an isis affiliate in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar Province, along the border with Pakistan. In Washington, the White House press secretary Sean Spicer said that it “targeted a system of tunnels and caves that isis fighters used to move around freely, making it easier for them to target U.S. military advisers and Afghan forces in the area.” …

The U.S. decision to drop the bomb was striking for several reasons. America’s biggest non-nuclear bomb–which costs sixteen million dollars, and three hundred million dollars to develop — was used on one of the smallest militias it faces anywhere in the world. ISIS-K is estimated to have only about seven hundred fighters in Afghanistan, compared to the eighty-five hundred U.S. troops and the hundred and eighty thousand Afghan troops on the ground there.

The attack also comes after a year of significant progress against the jihadi extremists who, like their brethren in Iraq and Syria, seek to establish a caliphate, with Jalalabad as their capital. In February, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Army General John Nicholson, told a Congressional committee that ISIS-K had lost about a third of its fighters and two-thirds of its territory during the last year to drone strikes and Special Forces operations. More than a hundred additional fighters, including two leaders, have been killed this month, Afghan officials say.

In contrast, the war with the Taliban is at a stalemate, Nicholson said this year. He has called for the U.S. to deploy several thousand more troops in Afghanistan.

The decision to deploy the first moab also revealed the Trump Administration’s revised chain of command. With the approval of U.S. Central Command, Nicholson called in the strike, a reflection of how President Trump has shifted major wartime decisions to the U.S. military brass. Pressed on whether he had ordered the mission, Trump told reporters, on Thursday, “What I do is authorize my military.” President Obama, a lawyer, was deeply involved in decision-making on all major military actions. Trump has deflected decisions to the generals who hold key positions in his inner circle or who are in the field.

“Frankly,” Trump told a White House pool, “that is why they have been so successful lately. If you look at what has happened over the last eight weeks and compare that really to what has happened over the last eight years, you will see there has been a tremendous difference.” — Robin Wright, The New Yorker

Bannon Demoted

Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief advisor, has not had a good couple of weeks. Arc’s Berny Belvedere wrote about his troubles in a piece called “Bannon Goes Down,” and then reflected on the broader implications in a follow-up called “The Ship of State as the Ship of Theseus.”

United Airlines

The disturbing scene captured on cellphone videos by United Airlines passengers on Sunday went beyond the typical nightmares of travelers on an overbooked flight.

An unidentified man who refused to be bumped from a plane screamed as a security officer wrestled him out of his seat and dragged him down the aisle by his arms. His glasses slid down his face, and his shirt rose above his midriff as uniformed officers followed.

At least two passengers documented the physical confrontation and the man’s anguished protests, and their videos spread rapidly online on Monday as people criticized the airline’s tactics. — The New York Times

While nearly all agree United was in the wrong, reactions, predictably, were varied.

The socialist writer Matt Bruenig saw in the episode the inherent violence of capitalism. Below, we link to a piece by conservative commentator Kevin Williamson who, from the opposite side of the ideological spectrum, also provides a structural critique, though of the airline industry, not of the current orientation of our society. (He calls the airline industry one of those in which there are frustrating asymmetries of power). Chris Sagers, writing in The Washington Post, offers yet another structural critique.

MVP Race

Below, we link to several pieces ruminating on this year’s MVP race in the NBA. Arc contributor Brandon Anderson has an in-depth look, and The Ringer’s Bill Simmons drops what he assures us the greatest MVP column yet. CBS’ Matt Moore also gives us an analytically impressive rundown.

Writing in The Federalist, Berny Belvedere gives his pick: James Harden. Read his case in full here.

Want to support Arc? Please take a second to like and follow us on these accounts. It genuinely helps us.

This Week In History

April 14

1865 — Abraham Lincoln is shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater in Washington.

April 15

1947 — Jackie Robinson becomes first African-American to play in MLB.

2013 — Boston Marathon bombings: 3 people are killed and 183 injured after two explosions near the finish line.

April 17

1982 — The U.S.’ neighbor to the north, Canada, adopts its constitution.

April 19

1775 — The American Revolution begins. At Lexington Common, there is the shot “heard round the world.”

1824 — Lord Byron (b. 1788), the British Romantic, passes away.

1882 — Charles Darwin (b. 1809), one of the most influential scientists of all time, passes away.

Quote

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.

— Lord Byron

--

--

Arc Digital
Arc Digital

Written by Arc Digital

1.6K Followers

Arc Digital’s editorial board consists of editor in chief Berny Belvedere and senior editor Nicholas Grossman.

Help

Status

About

Careers

Press

Blog

Privacy

Terms

Text to speech

Teams