posted
Billmon makes the point that Hezbollah is just the right size for modern war. Israel cannot drive them out of Southern Lebanon solely using air power, and a ground offensive (for the moment) seems unlikely. It would unite world opinion against Israel, whereas now they are getting support from (of all places) Saudia Arabia, who has condemned Hezbollah for starting this mess.
quote: (In that sense, Hezbollah may have found the sweet spot in Fourth Generation War : It isn't a state and doesn't carry the political or defensive burdens of one, but it controls enough territory, commands enough popular loyalty and has enough allies to mount some fairly sophisticated military operations, using both conventional and nonconventional weapons. It's powerful enough to be successful -- and be seen as successful -- but not so powerful that state actors like Israel can fight it on equal terms. We may be looking at the New Model Army of the 21st century.) ... But given how well Hezbollah is doing so far, it doesn't look the Israelis can deliver a knock out blow -- not in a few weeks, or a few months and probably not even in a few years. And a Hezbollah that takes whatever Israel dishes out, and emerges not just intact, but with a few notches in its own gun, would be a Hezbollah that looks like a real winner.
In this interview from 3/2002, Professor Martin van Creveld, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (one of Israel's most prominent military historian, and an expert on low-intensity combat) shows that Israel has been degrading itself by fighting the Palestinians the way they have. I would say they have done little better in their recent Lebanese advetures.
quote: Byrne: Thanks for joining us tonight on Foreign Correspondent. How has it come to this, Martin... how is it that the mighty Israeli army – one of the world’s most powerful - with its helicopter gunships, with its tanks, with it’s missiles, can be losing to this relatively small, relatively under-armed if fanatical group of Palestinians?
Van Creveld: The same thing has happened to the Israeli army as happened to all the rest that have tried over the last sixty years. Basically it’s always a question of the relationship of forces. If you are strong, and you are fighting the weak for any period of time, you are going to become weak yourself. If you behave like a coward then you are going to become cowardly – it’s only a question of time. The same happened to the British when they were here... the same happened to the French in Algeria... the same happened to the Americans in Vietnam... the same happened to the Soviets in Afghanistan... the same happened to so many people that I can’t even count them.[including, of course, us Americans in Iraq--Morbo]
Byrne: : Martin you used the word ‘cowardly’ yet what we’ve seen tonight – these commando units, the anti-terrorist squads – these aren’t cowardly people.
Van Creveld: I agree with you. They are very brave people... they are idealists... they want to serve their country and they want to prove themselves. The problem is that you cannot prove yourself against someone who is much weaker than yourself. They are in a lose/lose situation. If you are strong and fighting the weak, then if you kill your opponent then you are a scoundrel... if you let him kill you, then you are an idiot. So here is a dilemma which others have suffered before us, and for which as far as I can see there is simply no escape. Now the Israeli army has not by any means been the worst of the lot. It has not done what for instance the Americans did in Vietnam... it did not use napalm, it did not kill millions of people. So everything is relative, but by definition, to return to what I said earlier, if you are strong and you are fighting the weak, then anything you do is criminal.
Also, by destablizing the Lebanese government, the Israelis make it much harder, and less likely, that the Lebanese government can or will do anything to reign in Hezbollah. Similarly, they repeatedly attacked and destablized the PA, and then condemned them for not having a monopoly on power and arresting terrorists.
Yet, paradoxically, today the Israeli PM rejected using UN peacekeepers to keep Hezbollah from using Southern Lebanon as a launching pad, and demanded that only Lebanese forces are suitable for that mission. Even though such a mobilisation order could probably not be carried out, and if it was attempted could lead to another civil war in Lebanon. Weird.
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Interesting, I hadn't seen that bit about UN peacekeepers. That would seem to go a long way towards helping to give Israel the security that it is after.
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Lebanese forces are in no way capable of ousting Hezbollah from S. Lebanon. Requiring that they do so is a recipe for prolonged hardship for everyone...except Hezbollah.
Destabilizing Lebanon is not a good thing for anyone. Israel is not the likely inheritor of that territory. And if they did somehow manage to take it over, they would learn pretty quickly that major increases in borders have their own set of headaches. If one intends to keep people there and keep them safe, that is.
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It doesn't seem weird to me. If Israel insists that Lebanese forces are the ones preventing Hezbollah from using southern Lebanon, and at the same time manages to successfully insist they're the only ones suited for it...and then it doesn't happen, well they've got justification for all sorts of things once those things happen.
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Israel will move in with ground forces soon, the United States taught the world the effectiveness of combined arms ground assault in Falluja, Israel can flush Lebanon like a toilet and then hand it back to the Lebanese government, and they will.
posted
Oh, I agree rivka. Were I Israel, I certainly wouldn't trust the UN. Hell, I'm American and I don't trust the UN very much. Mostly due to the whole who-gets-to-veto thing (including us)
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I hope Israel can wipe out Hezbollah and not get further embroiled. Let's just say I am worried and not very hopeful.
But I don't see another route for them than a ground offensive.
I hope nobody gets too adventurous while Israel is committed in Lebanon, though.
I don't know the strength of Israel's forces, but I'd worry about having to fight on more than one front at this point. And who knows what Syria might attempt.
This is a dangerous time.
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I don't see Israel launching a major ground assault, and if they did, it won't be like Gaza. Hezbollah has a lot more man power and a lot more weapons, and better weapons, than Hamas has, or was willing to use when Israel marched back into Gaza.
Lebanon can't oust Hez on its own, and to try would probably mean yet ANOTHER Civil War in that country, not that it matters at this point anyway, since they've already gotten the crap blown out of them, but I don't understand why the UN can't go in to secure the situation, then hand power over to the Lebanese after they've gotten a chance to get back on their feet. If Hezbollah can give Israel a bloody nose, how do they expect Lebanon, the weakest military power in the area, to take them on?
Much of the current situation doesn't make sense, and I don't see especially how the US plans on helping, when four of the major parties involved in the current crisis have zero official standing with the US. If we can't even talk to the groups who are involved, we might as well just sit on the sidelines and shut up. Better that, than being percieved as giving Israel a greenlight to carpet bomb residential buildings.
Perhaps the most amazing thing in this is the Arab world, not as a whole, but more than you'd guess, actually blaming Hezbollah for the current mess, and not Israel. But that won't last for long if Arab citizens keep seeing images of a smoking Beirut. It'll turn back the other way, which is exactly what Hezbollah wants. Now is the best time for international help, while everyone he keenly focused on the issue at hand. The more time that passes, the worse it will get for Israel.
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Israel can, will, and likely should smash Hezbollah, but they need to take significant care with the civilian population. Both Israel and the US made a misake in not taking advantage of the international furor against Syria over the assassination last year to cripple that government.
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Two fronts? Like Europe and Japan? Come on the "Two Fronts" are within thirty minutes by helicopter, lets not get carried away by imaginary scale issues.
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Okay, how much time does it take to transport a thousand people by helicopter?
C'mon, the logistics of that kind of two front things are not measured in helicopter flight times...
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Getting attacked by Egypt and Saudi Arabia in the south while half your army is occupying Lebanon IS going to be a headache Bean. Unless you're telling me Israel has the lift capability, and the mobility to move that many men across a desert fast enough to stop invaders from doing any harm.
I don't think they do.
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: And of course, Israel has so many good reasons to trust the UN or its agents.
Hi Rivka! I've been meaning to email you lately but have been lazy. Sorry.
Of course Israel has reason to distrust the UN. Do they have any reason to trust the Lebanese government more? If not, then why would the Israeli PM insist only they can muzzle Hizbollah, when the Lebanese have shown so little abilty or will to do so?
I would think he would welcome a UN role. It would give Israel a clear exit strategy, before things escalate even more.
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Giving the UN a foothold or a position of power in this situation is a lousy idea. The UN's traditional role in similar situations has been to drag things out, and drag things out, and usually make things worse.
Not dealing with the official Lebanese government is not an option. Not dealing with the UN is.
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Oh, the UN has often been useful, but mainly where there's an uncooperative government that can be coerced into allowing their presence and no sufficiently powerful and positioned actor is nearby. In this case, the government is fairly cooperative and Israel is a sufficiently powerful and well positioned actor, so UN intervention is unnecessary.
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quote:Originally posted by Bean Counter: Two fronts? Like Europe and Japan? Come on the "Two Fronts" are within thirty minutes by helicopter, lets not get carried away by imaginary scale issues.
BC
That makes things worse, it makes it easier for the Egyptians to cooperate with Hezbollah. There comes a point where the advantage of interior lines turns into the disadvantage of being surrounded.
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Israel has no logical choice but to execute operations against Hezbollah. The immediate security threat presented by their rocket attacks and the imperative nature of the kidnapping of the Israeli troops makes any other coarse of action impossible. Sending in ground troops may be necessary to ensure that major damage is done to Hezbollah, and that Israel’s stance on these kinds of attacks is unmistakable.
The resulting (potential) destabilization that of the Lebanese government is an acceptable evil. However, any apparent vacuum of power in Lebanon will compel Syria to immediate action, as they have already shown their propensity to get involved in Lebanese politics. While the reintroduction of Syrian influence will be a step back, the elimination of Hezbollah will help to remove some of the radical influence that has been marring the peace process, and hopefully will result in the return of the captured soldiers and a net increase in the security of the region.
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Right now the threat is missile launches, locating and retaliating fast. Iraqi insurgents learned fast to be gone in under a minute of launch or end up a sneaker and a smoking hole, Israel has the look down capability of tracking every vehicle in the city, tagging an area and using real time intel to feed to attack choppers and follow a fleeing vehicle to a terrorist nest and pound it with hell-fires, so when ground forces start coming in with armor, being surrounded may be an issue, right now chopper response time is much more of a real issue.
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We or the UN will have to be the ones who bolster the Lebanese instead of Damascus, we cannot afford to let another warlord become popular with Capone style politics.
quote:Originally posted by dantesparadigm: The resulting (potential) destabilization that of the Lebanese government is an acceptable evil. However, any apparent vacuum of power in Lebanon will compel Syria to immediate action, as they have already shown their propensity to get involved in Lebanese politics. While the reintroduction of Syrian influence will be a step back, the elimination of Hezbollah will help to remove some of the radical influence that has been marring the peace process, and hopefully will result in the return of the captured soldiers and a net increase in the security of the region.
Right, because of Syria moves back in to take control of Lebanon, they won't set Hezbollah, or a new organization with the same purpose right back up in the same postion Hezbollah was set up in while Syria was previously in charge of Lebanon.
So long as Israel has the US on its side, and Western Europe is unwilling to push anyone to do anything, Israel will remain unhindered in their pursuits, and the violence will only escalate until there's just nothing left for Israel to bomb but ruins. The US can't really use the death of civilians as a reason to pull out, 40 people died in Baghdad just yesterday, though we didn't do it, many would argue that they are only dead because we are there. We tossed the ball up in the air, and Israel is testing how far they can run with it. So far it looks like it's fairly far.
From Israel's point of view, there's really no reason to halt. I'd care more about Israelis than Lebanese citizens, and at the moment, Jordan is quiet, Syria is quiet, Iran is far, far away, Iraq is busy with America, Saudi Arabia is actually blaming Hezbollah, and Egypt is scrambling to make peacemaker. All the while, the US supports us, and Western Europe is fumbling around yammering about peacekeepers, in other words, all talk and no action.
I don't think they'll be able to keep the status quo forever, but then they don't have to. I also don't think that at the end of this they'll get their men back. But I hope at the end they at least behead Hezbollah. If they don't then I think all they will have done would be to make the situation to their north much worse than when they started.
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I thought this was an interesting analysis of Israel's strategic motives.
quote: Some in Israel viewed all three of these potential policy courses for the U.S. -- a broad deal with the Arab Middle East, a new push on final status negotiations with the Palestinians, and a deal to actually negotiate directly with Iran -- as negative for Israel.
The flamboyant, over the top reactions to attacks on Israel's miltiary check points and the abduction of soldiers -- which I agree Israel must respond to -- seem to be part establishing "bona fides" by Olmert -- but far more important, REMOVING from the table important policy options that the U.S. might have pursued.
Israel is constraining American foreign policy in amazing and troubling ways by its actions. And a former senior CIA official and another senior Marine who are well-versed in both Israeli and broad Middle East affairs, agreed that serious strategists in Israel are more concerned about America tilting towards new bargains in the region than they are either about the challenge from Hamas or Hezbollah or showing that Olmert knows how to pull the trigger.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-clemons/shrewd-israeli-objectives_b_25110.html I don't think Israel's reactions to the capture of their soldiers is quite this Machevellian. Also, I'm not sure if their actions constrain us in the US from our options like the article spells out (though the article is persuasive). But it's a very interesting thesis.
Lastly, Israel could be pursuing it's own aims for it's own reasons, and those actions could have the added effect of limiting US foreign policy options.
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Of course they consider what we plan to do to be critically important, of course they are pursuing their own interest, of course their choices eliminate some of ours, it is the sinister way that you characterize these obvious and reasonable facts that points to an agenda on your part, above and beyond being your being reasonable.
posted
CS Monitor article on the affect the war & the responses of the Arab governments is having on the Arab street.
quote: But countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia have little influence over the militant Shiite group and its backers Iran and Syria, so their statements may be of little practical value. Instead, their comments emphasize the widening gap between these regimes and their people.
. . .
"The regime claimed that peace with Israel would create prosperity and jobs. But we have been at peace for over 20 years and have not seen any prosperity. We can't watch our Palestinian and Lebanese and Iraqi brothers be slaughtered every day and do nothing."
In Saudi, too, the regime's position isn't shared by its public. "I don't think the Saudi government's statement is in tune with how most Saudis feel about the Lebanese situation," says Bassem Alim, an activist lawyer based in Jeddah, and frequent government critic.
"The way they said it was extremely damaging to their reputation in the Islamic world."
Anger at Saudi Arabia's close relationship with the US, and by association Israel, has long generated support for Al Qaeda among many Saudis, so the government has taken a risk by speaking in a manner that jihadists view as supporting Israel.
But he and other analysts say that Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia's history of animosity with Shiite Iran, which sought to challenge the Saudi monarchy's position of leadership among world Muslims after its Islamic revolution, has left the regime more nervous about Iran's nuclear program than about flareups of terrorism that, while dramatic, have never challenged the regime.
"The Saudis are trying to make sure that the United Nations and the Security Council will be involved in the region as a way of controlling Iran,'' says Saudi political analyst Adel al-Toraifi.
. . .
And as the crisis has spiraled, even Arab leaders close to the US and Israel, have warned of the potential for blowback. "Israel will not emerge as a victor in this war. It will only create more enemies," Egyptian President Mubarak said Monday. "The war will only inflame Arab animosity toward Israel (and) many anti-Israel extremist forces will surface."
The entire article is worth a read.
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KoM once wrote the wisest think I ever heard on this subject and, I think, has given us the key to the only way to real peace in the region.
quote: And it's difficult to get a howling mob together in a country which is about 90% middle class.
The only thing that will work in the long run is for these people to have a path to a better life. Jobs. People with jobs don't time to blow things up.
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I am surprised by the middle class thing. I find it incredible that people with nice lives in reasonable homes with the ability to provide a decent life for their children can get so motivated.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I agree that I am oversimplifying.
I am surprised by the middle class thing. I find it incredible that people with nice lives in reasonable homes with the ability to provide a decent life for their children can get so motivated.
Most revolutionaries come from the middle or upper classes. It's the norm.
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I believe it's less than 65%, so not "most" or "the norm"; but it is patently true that people with jobs most emphatically are finding the time to blow Israelis up.
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Hum. Possibly I missed out a word in that sentence; I might have been better off saying "about 90% middle class and atheist or apatheist".
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quote:Are you aware of the fact that more than half of those who have attempted or succeeded to detonate suicide bombs have been middle class?
Thank G-d someone said this. We aren't fighting wars about poverty, we are fighting wars of degradation, and there is a difference, a non-negligible difference. The issue does concern food and jobs, but there is also no small part of the conflict that concerns land, community, culture, emasculation, and degradation.
Until we give that latter class of issues serious thought, we aren't going to approach a stable peace, in the middle east or in our American city streets.
posted
Rivka, Thanksa for the articles. I have printed them off but haven't had a chance to read them yet. Didn't want you to think I was neglecting you!
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Another gloomy military analyst, again via billmon. org , chimes in about the odd straits Israel finds itself in.
Arrcording to billmon, "William S. Lind is generally recognized as the leading U.S. theorist of non-conventional, fourth generation war, and has recently been helping the Marine Corps rewrite its bible on the subject, the Small Wars Manual."
quote: I think the stakes in the Israel-Hezbollah-Hamas war are significantly higher than most observers understand. If Hezbollah and Hamas win—and winning just means surviving, given that Israel’s objective is to destroy both entities—a powerful state will have suffered a new kind of defeat, again, a defeat across at least one international boundary and maybe two, depending on how one defines Gaza’s border. The balance between states and 4GW forces will be altered world-wide, and not to a trivial degree.
from the short essay "The Summer of 1914" by William S. Lind It seems to me Hezbollah can definitely survive an air campaign, and even a short ground offensive. I make no predictions about Hamas in Gaza. But is mere survival "winning", as Lind would have it? I don't know.
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BTW, I support Israel in it's fight against Hezbollah. I hope Hezbollah is crushed as a fighting force after the dust settles. Even though I think that's unlikely.
But I think Israel's broader war against Lebanon is counterproductive to Israel's own long-term goals, strategy, and even survival.
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But think of the post Hezbollah construction boom in Lebanon after the Israeli's stop shooting! It will be better then Florida after a Hurricane or New Orleans, Jobs for Palestinians is what this is all about!
This has wrecked Lebanon's economy for the next five to ten years, to say nothing of how the displaced people will survive without an infrastructure.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: What peace pipe have you been smoking?
This has wrecked Lebanon's economy for the next five to ten years, to say nothing of how the displaced people will survive without an infrastructure.
Oh, well. I guess harboring a psychopathic terrorist army is a bad policy decision.
If you think what is happening now is going to make the problem go away, you must be smoking the same pipe as Bean Counter.
The armed forces present in Michigan at the moment could probably take out the Lebanese military. I don't know how you expect them to take on Hezbollah, especially when, after a week of extensive bombings that have ravaged Lebanon, Israel still hasn't significantly degraded Hezbollah's ability to prosecute hostilities against Israel. While I think Lebanon should have put significant pressure on Hezbollah to disarm, (and while they were making SOME progress, just not a lot), pretending that Hezbollah exists because Lebanon didn't take them out when they had the chance is ludicrous.
Syria just recently ended their occupation of Lebanon, and free elections for the first time there installed a new democratic government. Quite frankly I think it would have been a horrible decision to immediately immerse the nation in a civil war with Hezbollah the moment they'd finally achieved freedom. Then again, if the alternative is to be wiped off the map by Israel, perhaps civil war would have been preferable.
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Rivka, Cool articles. I found Krueger's study - the NYT article is a summary. Fascinating stuff. He and I are talking about somewhat different things. As you said, I oversimplified. His data records the education and economic levels of individual terrorists as compared to the general populace of the area. I was thinking (in my head - I didn't communicate this at all) more to the general levels of poverty and unemployment of the area rather than to individuals compared to others in the same area.
Having said that, I am conviced that civil rights and self-determination are more of a factor than poverty.
Thanks again for the reading!
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