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Wesley Morgan

@wesleymorgan.bsky.social

6.8K followers 790 following 2.6K posts

Writing about America’s post-9/11 wars https://linktr.ee/wesleysmorgan Author of THE HARDEST PLACE https://bookshop.org/shop/Wesleymorgan https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/227894/the-hardest-place-by-wesley-morgan/ Signal wesmorgan.01

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Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · Feb 25

Thread of photos illustrating THE HARDEST PLACE, sorted by chapter:

If you took one of these photos, let me know! Most were shared with me by unit commanders as part of big dumps of deployment photos, but I’d love to credit the individual veterans who took them.

Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · Feb 12

My Afghanistan war book THE HARDEST PLACE is approaching its four-year anniversary.

Since I’ve mostly migrated from Twitter to Bluesky, over the next few months I’m going to recreate here a long thread of photos that many readers have enjoyed scrolling through as an accompaniment to the book.

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Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 5h

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a non-Indian side-to-side head bob!

Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 5h

Indian?

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Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 5h

Yeah, I was very puzzled too when we first started seeing photos like this back in early 2024 so I went through old DSCA files and Israeli media coverage of accidents involving M15s:

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Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 5h

Seconds after I posted this, a guy followed me who exclusively posts about Arsenal soccer. He must have something going where he auto-follows every person who writes the word “arsenal” in any context.

Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 5h

As far as I can tell, no more M15s have been sold to them since the immediate aftermath of the 1973 war—but the arsenal of them that DOD donated then is effectively bottomless.

Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 5h

As far as I can tell, no more M15s have been sold to them since the immediate aftermath of the 1973 war—but the arsenal of them that DOD donated then is effectively bottomless.

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Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 5h

As for the mines themselves, they are Korean War-era M15 antitank mines which the US donated a huge number of to the IDF after the 1973 war for the purpose of mining the Golan Heights etc. In the 1980s, the IDF began to repurpose and retrofit them as their standard charges for building demolition.

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Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 5h

It’s a process involving both the mines and the earthmovers. At the beginning in early 2024 it was often mines alone, but last fall civilian contract earthmovers were surged in to speed things up in Jabaliya and Rafah and Netzarim.

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Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 6h

Fehrenbach updated for Gaza:

"You may fly over a [CITY] forever, you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life. But if you desire to [FULLY FLATTEN IT TO THE FOUNDATIONS TO PREVENT RESETTLEMENT], you must do this on the ground…by putting your [BULLDOZERS] in the mud."

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Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 6h

See rest of thread bsky.app/profile/wesl...

Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 6h

Here’s what the difference looks like between a neighborhood very heavily damaged by airpower and combat (left) and one razed fully by earthmovers (center and right, the signature IDF tactic since March).

Once the earthmovers have been through, the shadows disappear on overhead imagery.

Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 6h

Here are two more of the latter from Beit Hanoun this summer:

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Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 6h

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Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 6h

And Beit Hanoun here: bsky.app/profile/wesl...

Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 19d

And here's a 0.85-square-mile rectangle of Beit Hanoun, the satellite city of 50,000 that used to be northeast of Gaza City, in Jan 2024, Dec 2024, and Sept 2025.

The IDF started razing Beit Hanoun in Dec 2023 when they began the buffer zone and finished this past summer (it is effectively gone):

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Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 6h

…and Shejaiya and Rafah and so much of Khan Younis and Jabaliya now have been, since the ceasefire. You can see here the timeline of how the earthmover operations turned heavily damaged neighborhoods in Shejaiya into fully erased ones, for example: bsky.app/profile/wesl...

Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 19d

The area in red on the first map here is 1.25 square miles of Gaza City's Shejaiyah district, which the IDF has very thoroughly demolished with earthmovers over the past year.

The next 3 images show the extent of demolitions in that rectangle of Shejaiyah by Dec 2024, May 2025, and mid-Sept 2025:

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Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 6h

Many of these areas were already *very* heavily damaged from bombing, artillery, and more limited demolitions in 2023-24. But even a neighborhood where 100 percent of buildings have been heavily damaged from the air still has a long way to go before being fully erased in the way Beit Hanoun…

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Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 6h

…in March, the earthmover treatment has expanded to the entirety of Rafah, most of Khan Younis itself, all of Beit Hanoun, nearly all of Shejaiya and Zeitoun in Gaza City and smaller portions of Daraj, Tuffah, etc., and much of Jabaliya and Beit Lahiya.

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Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 6h

…within a couple kilometers of the border, like the half of Rafah razed for the Philadelphi Corridor, Khuzaa on the outskirts of Khan Younis, eastern Shejaiya, and parts of Beit Hanoun, as well as whole towns like Mughraqa that were within the Netzarim Corridor.

Since the ground war resumed…

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Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 6h

Before the January ceasefire, most of the very heavy damage across Gaza was from airpower, which is devastating but lacks the capacity to flatten whole neighborhoods to their foundations that earthmovers prove. The areas that had undergone the full earthmover treatment included neighborhoods…

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Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 7h

If this $53 billion estimate is from February, it’s from before a very large proportion of the most methodical IDF destruction of urban Gazan neighborhoods

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Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 8h

Phenomenal stuff, if you like cherry Dr. Pepper. A Georgia/Carolinas thing that has been expanding northward in recent years

Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 12h

How do you feel about Cheerwine?

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Reposted by Wesley Morgan

Reconstructionist @unavaleable.bsky.social · 14h

saw this new flavor in the store and its honestly pretty damn good

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Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 12h

Agreed

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Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 16h

Not to mention the combat-arms one-stars they made the Army OCPA chiefs…when Gary Volesky (who once told me the only book he reads on deployment is the Bible) got OCPA, I was flabbergasted

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Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 16h

*where the war was being fought and where you could develop real sources who were fighting it

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Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 16h

Yeah, you’re spot on. There was a time, when I was starting out in journalism in 2007-13ish, when PAOs were very helpful, in that they saw their job as getting you out to the outposts where the war was being fought. Then the Obama admin strangled embedding and PAOing became social media managing.

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