Sunday, July 23, 2006
WAR NOTES
I'm becoming concerned that the Israelis won't have the time to do what needs to be done. There's really only two ways to win a war: Either engage your enemy head-on and "overmatch" him with strength, or bleed him until he runs out of logistical or political support. (When the U.S. has been defeated militarily, it's always been by way of depriving its forces of political support by simply staying alive and attacking with tactical pinpricks while the democratic process back home takes its course.)
It's becoming obvious that the Israelis can't choose the first option of crushing Hezbulla head-on: The destruction to Lebanon's civilian infrastructure and non-Hezbullah population would be too great for the U.S. diplomatic cover to withstand. Unfortunately, the logic of Arab and Muslim politics is such that the longer a conflict goes on, the greater the political support for Hezbullah will be -- after all, they've been on the losing side of every military conflict in which they've engaged since 1685, and the ideological base for growing support in the face of strategic losses has been well laid since the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood.
So the only option open to Israel is to force Hezbullah to exhaust its logistical support. Thus the Israeli opening gambit of attacking large-scale supply points like bridges, airports and seaports. But it looks like both the Hez supply cache in place and its ability to call on that cache is larger and more robust than many expected. Thus, it could take much longer than the week all the diplomatic leekers are talking about to press Hezbullah to the point of logistical exhaustion, after which it could be defeated in detail. And of course, not being a regular army, most of Hezbullah's human strength can simply melt back into the general Shiite population at that point, anyway.
Two or three weeks hence, we could be faced with what amounts to a strategic victory for the enemy: Diplomatic support for Israel will be shredding in the growing gale of media bias, while Hezbullah remains intact and more or less in place as a force able to fight on its terms once Israel is forced to withdraw and cease combat.
Which is, of course, a disaster. Hezbullah has demonstrated in this conflict that Iran can supply an irregular force of jihadis with a level of technology above any that's been used by such forces in the past. This establishes a new, higher floor on the capabilities of the best-trained and best-equipped jihadi forces; creating an example that outfits like Sadr's Mehdi Army, Hamas and the soon-to-be-reconstituted al Qaida base in Somalia can aspire to.
So, to all those working so hard to undermine Israel's ability to serve as the sharpened spear-point of the West in this war that you deny exists, I say well done!
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 9:24 AM
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