Problems with Israeli Military Performance
If you read Reuven Pedatzur's article in Haaretz attentively, you will see that he is indicting the Israeli armed forces as incompetent and also will detect that he is extremely alarmed. Despite his confidence, expressed at the outset, that Israeli military mistakes (primarily grossly underestimating Hizbullah) will not affect the course of the war, he admits that it will cast a shadow over its public reception. I don't think we can rule out an impact on the course of the war yet.
Wire services report
' Israeli Armed Forces effectives returning from the Lebanon’s front, say they are facing an intelligent, well prepared and ruthless guerrilla. The soldiers describe Hezbollah guerrillas hide between civilians and in underground bunkers that are two or three stories deep, evidence that this has been prepared for years. They are hard to beat and show no fear of dying, expressed an Israeli soldier. '
The Israelis are finding that the Hizbullah guerrillas have excellent intelligence on Israeli weaponry, and that they are capable of fighting orderly tactical battles from buildings with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. In other words, they are not facing the militia of tobacco share croppers. They are facing a highly professional military force, perhaps the most professional in the region aside from Israel's own.
The Israeli military is rapidly scaling back its military goals, since the ones initially announced with such confidence (pushing Hizbullah back 35 miles and completely destroying its missile arsenal) are obviously pie in the sky. The Israelis are stumbling around so badly that yesterday they lost a helicopter and killed 6 of their own men (it could have been much worse).
posted by Juan Cole @ 7/25/2006 06:14:00 AM
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13 Comments:
Greetings Professor. Nice to see an expert telling it real. As for the Israeli military getting bogged down, sounds eerily like Iraq. The same kind of people with the "creative deconstruction" plan in mind.
Reuven Pedatzur's article seems to only question the IDF's review processes.
"As for the Israeli military getting bogged down, sounds eerily like Iraq."
And, like Iraq, it's the LAST thing any of the key players (at least on the U.S.-Israeli side) expected. This is the march of folly on methamphetamines.
But then it stands to reason that hubris as monumental as that displayed by America after the fall of Baghdad and by Israel after the crushing of the second intifada would be followed by nemesis on a grand scale.
I think the 6 soldiers that were killed with friendly fire were only injuries, correct? Or did they die in the hospital later on?
As an aside, tobacco sharecroppers proved a match for the Germans in WW1 and WW2, as shown by the member rolls of local VFWs.
I understand that your comparison was between a militia and a trained military but a militia proved more than sufficient at King's Mountain and many other battlefields.
Hizbullah has perfected the asymmetrical war; Israelis, trained like so many US officers for a tank and artillary war on the plains of Poland, cannot deal with tunnel warfare and the inevitable casualties they will have to suffer to clear the tunnels.
The fact that the US is shipping bunker buster ordnance to try to clear out these tunnels show that the lessons of Viet Nam remain unlearned.
What happens if one of these bombings kill the two soldiers?
I don't get it. Sure, Hezbollah doesn't have the degree of Syrian support that they had when they fought the IDF to a standstill in southern Lebanon a decade ago. But surely Israel didn't think Hezbollah had gotten weaker during the past 6 years of relative peace?
One thing I will note, however, is that Israel has not sent overwhelming force into southern Lebanon. They appear to have sent a brigade-strength detachment into Lebanon (i.e., app. 1,000 soldiers), against a Hizbullah force that probably numbers five times that number once "reserve" fighters have been mobilized (normally, Hizbullah has about 500 full time fighters). Even with Israel's overwhelming technological advantage, that's not enough troops against an enemy that is dug into mountainous terrain.
Is Israel going to commit to a full-scale invasion, or not? We'll see. I'll just state that don't look for any overwhelming Israeli defeat. Israel has the second-most-powerful military on the planet, and can militarily defeat anybody who stands against it. The problem is, then they have to hold that territory. As in Iraq, that's when the trouble starts, in a guerilla war of a thousand cuts... and as I've noted, there's only one way to win a guerilla war: Genocide.
Meanwhile, the people of Lebanon suffer all because a few hotheads on both sides see political advantage in death and destruction. Feh. A curse on both their houses.
"Despite his confidence, expressed at the outset, that Israeli military mistakes (primarily grossly underestimating Hizbullah) will not affect the course of the war, he admits that it will cast a shadow over its public reception."
Somethings's going on here, but you don't know what it is. Do you, Mr. Pedatzur?
Poor, poor Israel. Damned if they invade, damned if they don't. I mean, actually damned, as in perhaps Yahweh isn't playing favorites.
Israel has no good options. Either they scale back and let Hizbollah claim victory, or they march lockstep into oblvivion, but hey, didn't Douglas Feith want to bomb oblivion into Lebanon. Oh, wait, that was .... bomb Bolivia into oblivion. (He actually made that suggestion, while on the US dole/payroll at the time).
Bolivia, oblivion, Lebanon.....Ah ha! Now we know why this war is being fought. It's because someone mistranslaterated oblivion for Lebanon.
It looks like Israel learned nothing from its Vietnam in Lebanon, much like America learned nothing from its Vietnam in Vietnam. To make matters worse, Israel seems to have a prime minister every bit as inexperienced, fanatical, and misguided as the American president George W. Bush. The predictable disasters so cavalierly unleashed by both of these mediocre, historically ignorant men should surprise no one.
The ridiculous public-relations rationale for this long-planned Israeli assault on an entire nation -- namely, that it had something to do with a couple of Israeli soldiers taken ransom for prisoner exchanges -- wouldn't pass muster in the average metropolitan police department that deals regularly with more "hostages" in the typical bungled bank robbery.
The new Israeli prime minister, like the new American president Bush wanted and needed a "splendid little war" for domestic political considerations. Israel and America will both rue the day that these two forgettable failures got the margin of votes they needed to remain in power with nothing but the squandering of it for their lamentable "legacy."
M.Murry took the words right off my keyboard. If the brains of Olmert and Bush were joined together, they'd still be brain-dead.
Unfortunately these two bumbling, religion-crazed, militaristic fools are playing with the fate of our world.
Sadly, it might already be too late to stop the repercussions arising from this latest Israeli/American madness and we may have already slid into WW3!
I am very, very scared! Someone please stop them!
cDr. Cole,
I have a question and a comment. the question first.
I saw this report yesterday:
http://www.antiwar.com/frank/?articleid=9401
I was wondering whether you had any more information as to where the Israeli soldiers were captured? Was it in Lebanon or Israel?
My comment is that it is becoming increasingly clear that Israel will continue to be the most militarily adventurous country in the world. I say this because this war seems like a perfect example of how they do not bear any of the costs of the war. They get their weapons free from the USA, they fight on other people's land, and they wait for foreign countries to pay to clean up their mess. The rocket threat (or should I say, "bottle rocket") from Hizbullah is not a serious danger and the Israelis know it.
One of the reasons that academics argue in favor of democratic countries having less war is because the people will not want to have to pay the costs of war. But Israel will never pay the costs. Why not make Israel pay to clean up the mess they caused in Lebanon, rather then Saudi? Why not, at least, force them to buy their own weapons? At least, in most cases a country's budget would have to accommodate the wars they fight (like with debt like in the USA, or by cutting funding of other priorities), but Israel will never have to because it is given so much cover by the USA. This is a big problem.
Yes, I'm worried about the WWIII thing too. This blog is really useful, Juan, so thanks; it's hard to get non-standard news when, like me, you're not an expert in the region and don't read the right languages.
Also, while I'm here: liked your response to the blogging forum in the Chronicle (it was there, right?)...I was so glad to hear someone say we've got priorities that come ahead of our 'careers'. "Aha, now that's a real professor," said I.
Getting the Hezbollah out of South Lebanon is probably akin to getting the Japanese out of Okinawa. And you ask a bunch of Israeli citizen/soldiers reservists to do this? I don't think Israel can pay the price.
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