Lest any of us think we are not doing the right
thing by preventing the bombing runs, read this
description of a run by two MiG jets, equivalent to,
perhaps with a little less throttle, than an F-18. This,
33,000 times per year:
"Three
puffs of white smoke appeared at the edge of the plain to
our south, and another on a ridge beyond a cluster of
houses on the outskirts of the village. Then, as we
heard the sound of approaching jets, we understood. The
helicopter had dropped smoke beacons for the pilots,
whose aircraft flashed into the sky from nowhere, the
engines so loud they shook the ground. The noise was
indescribable. I tried to photograph them as they
attacked. My fingers trembled at the controls of my
camera as I tried to follow their shapes, certain that
the pilots had seen me.
Two MiG fighter-bombers screamed over us, dived,
swooped and leaped vertically upwards above the ridges,
scattering clusters of magnesium flares that trailed from
their bellies like comets. They banked and swooped
again, glinting, deadly, silver, in long, roaring dives
out of the west, pulled up suddenly in tandem, and then
dived again, beyond the village....Then they were gone
and all that was left was the ringing in our ears and two
widening stains of brown earth against the sky hundreds
of feet high."
From "An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan" by
Jason Eliot (c) Picador Press, 1999: