I think Israel is primarily a victim of the expectations game here.  They set an overly ambitious goal and they consciously tried to compare themselves to the great victorious Israeli armies of the past, when they were fighting poorly trained, poorly led illiterate Arab peasants.  It's hard to produce more Six-Day victories when your opponent doesn't immediately retreat when you start firing.

Nonsense. This defeat for Israel is a catatrophe. I am tempted to say you can tell just how bad it is because Bush said the opposite. This war will in fact change the entire political/military complexion of the Middle East. First the Israel defeat will play itself out in Israel itself; it is hard to imagine Olmert surviving...although Peretz has managed to cover himself in dung as well...so the real victors politically likely will be Likud and Netanyahu (the left unfortunately did nothing and probably there was very little it could do.) In the rest of the Middle East the lessons of Hezbollah will not be lost, especially in Palestine. Newer military technology right now favors the infantry/the insurgents. The Merkava tank, supposedly one of the premiere weapons in the world, was penetrated by the rocketry Hezbollah employed. The key now is not to play the stupid games of the AIPAC/Bush/neocon crowd; it is try to get some sort of meaningful Palestinian-Israeli agreement before battlelines harden further. There is a definite drift towards greater war right now, and I think if the next round comes the US will join in.

"I think Israel is primarily a victim of the expectations game here. "

Israel is the victim of stupid decisions.

Stirling Newberry http://www.bopnews.com

The arab world wasn't united against Israel before this war? One can only wonder what world you have been living in.

This whole episode really is very puzzling. On the surface, it looks like Israel's plan was:

Step I: Start bombing Hizbollah targets from the air.

Stpe II: Then a miracle happens

Step III: Reap beaucoup strategic rewards from utter disappearance of Hizbollah, and reconquest of Lebanon by Lebanese government and army.

It also looks like when Step II didn't happen, Olmert simply changed his mind about the whole thing.

On the other hand, maybe Stirling has it right about the reason for Olmert's about face. Perhaps Israel's government was initially gung ho for a major ground assault in Step II, but was forced to do a sudden reevaluation when their first tank was destroyed. Suddenly what had at first looked like an easy win based on a lopsided technological advantage began to take on the visage of a fair gunfight on the other guy's home turf.

Neither of these accounts is completely convincing to me. I will be interested in seeing what the historians make of this war, but I'm inclined to believe that the war planners in Israel's government and military were expecting some key piece to fall into place which never fell - namely direct US intervention on behalf of Israel against Iran and Syria. When that intervention never came, Israel was left all by itself and exposed, and was forced to change course.

At some point during the war, the center-left in Israel began trumpeting the idea that the war was only supposed to be a limited degradation operation from the start, and that only loose cannon American neoconservatives were pushing it to expand.

I don't buy this. It strikes me as a contrived political ploy to maintain some national unity during wartime, and give Olmert a face-saving way of climbing down and confronting his own hawks by scapegoating foreign elements, and declaring the former war aims to be someone else'sidea. Of course, American neocons did want a broader and more ambitious war. But I have trouble believing that they weren't reading from the same page as Israel's political and military leaders - as they typically do.

I fail to see how it is a catastrophe for Israel. Splash of cold water in the face, icy cold perhaps, but a catastrophe?

In a grand picture, the task of Israel is not an attack but defence. Even assuming that all what Larry and Stirling say is true, the pendulum swings from "the best defence is attack" to "the best defence is defence". That would be a CHANGE, but it is not even clear that this is a bad kind of change.

One thing is that light infantry does not make an invasion force. It could make up for it with medium-long range rockets, but if Lebanon could withstand Israeli bombardment, Israel can withstand the worst Syria and Iran could offer -- assuming the nightmare scenario of Shia Iraq joing the coalition etc.

Tank was not invented as an invulnerable fighting platform than can move slowly among hills and bunkers and attack at leisure. Such a thing never existed. Tank is a blitz-krieg weapon. As a bunker, tank was never that good.

Of course, Egypt is the same as Hezbollah, and the Saudis the same as Iran. They are all cut from the same cloth.

Of course in and of itself it is not a catastrophe. But in terms of the willingness of Arab and Muslim masses to engage Israel militarily it is; in terms of strengthening the rejectionists both Israeli and Arabs) it is; in terms of increasing the likelihood of a direct US Iranian military confrontation it is. I entirely agree with you that Israel is not facing any imminent existential threat. But if no peace is agreed to soon, I think the low level disruptions in Israeli society will increase a great deal. I think the possibility of good coming from this whole shameful episode exists; but I worry if it does not come soon.. and making peace is so much harder than getting people to fight needless wars (yes some are necessary; but this one was another neocon waste).

I think that the real catastrophe is simply that inspiration leads to imitation, and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

The remarkable thing about Hezbollah is that tactically and strategically it performed far better and more effectively than any other Islamic guerilla movement.

Think about that.

For instance, the overall consensus is that Hamas, in a military or security sense, is a bit of a joke. Once in a while they persuade some dumbkoff to put on a suicide vest and blow something up, or they fire an RPG at something, but that's about it.

Their operations are infiltrated, the Israel's intelligence on their activities and personnel is comprehensive, their tactics are old.

As for Fatah, the PLO, Islamic Jihand or whoever else is bopping around the Palestinian authority, they're in even worse shape.

So, what happens if Hamas, or some of the other Palestinian groups, wake up? What happens if they pay attention to Hezbollahs tactics and strategy, and actually begin an effort to upgrade themselves, to turn out a cadre of Hezbollah quality soldiers and strategists, as opposed to the disorganized rabble that they've got now.

It's going to be a lot more difficult for them to stockpile weapons like Hezbollah. We can pretty much forget about Katyushas or more ambitious armament. But what if there was an effort at building up a stockpile up upgraded RPG's or surface to air missiles, so that Israel's advantages with tanks, troop carriers and helicopters were neutralized. And what about simply building tunnels, setting traps, learning some basics about fire control, setting up ambushes, etc.

This wouldn't turn Hamas or Fatah or whoever into a force capable of defeating Israel. But it would geometrically escalate their ability to inflict damage. And a rapid escalation of damage is probably a bad thing for Israel.

Turning to the other two ongoing insurgencies, there is Afghanistan and Iraq.

I don't expect Afghanistan to change much. Basically, Afghanistan is a lost cause. The occupation forces are still around because they're largely irrelevant and too difficult to dislodge. The US and its allies and puppet government control certain office buildings in Kabul during office hours and that's it.

On the other hand, the Insurgency in Iraq represents a group or series of groups which already possess weapons and military training and have already demonstrated a learning curve. These are groups that are bright enough and competent enough to look at what Hezbollah has accomplished and radically reform their tactics and strategies, their training and operations.

On this front, I don't believe that there's any question but that there will be a transfer of tactics and skills from Hezbollah to the Iraqi resistance. Even if Hezbollah refuses all contact, its going to be a case of monkey see/monkey do. The question is how much they will borrow, how long it will take and how successfully they will apply Hezbollahs lessons to the Americans.

Frankly, I think that the lifespan of an American soldier in Iraq has just dropped dramatically, though it may be months before the body counts escalate. In many ways, this may well have been the tipping point for the American experiment there.

Larry writes:

Israel lost at least 108 soldiers and 39 civilians during the last month. . .

What is truly remarkable is that Hizbullah displayed far more discipline on the battlefield than Israel. Most of the people killed by Hizbullah were soldiers, not civilians. Israel cannot say the same.

This is a little twisted. Hezbollah would have killed more Israeli civilians if it could have. And who were those rockets and missiles they fired across the border aimed at?

Hezbollah seems to have fought well against the IDF, but its discipline is not proven by the low number of Israelis killed.

LEL66-
ok, you seem to have a unique point of view among writers on this thread, but if you want to convince anyone you'll have to elaborate a little.
what do you mean by "total victory?"
how should this victory be accomplished?
will there be any negative repercussions?

thanks,
matt emmons

deleted

I see the Bush/neocon hand behind this move. They had to push Isreal into this fiasco. Has any body demanded to know what made Isreal choose this particular moment to take action? I'm absolutely sure the Bushbag adminstration was given a Heads up. So why did they give them a green light? Why didn'the US oppose an action that would obviously have an unpredictable impact on the already volital region? Why didn't the US demand the Isrealis hold off. Isreal has experienced these things in the past so I ask again, why did they choose this time to attack Lebanon?

Ed Beckmann Disabled Viet Vet

My only claim is that if Hezbollah hides and "blends" into civilian populations, why is there such outrage at Israel?

If your local police chased an armed robber on foot into an apartment building, and then dropped a bomb on the building to get him, don't you think there would be outrage? If the police then said: "the perpetrator is an immoral coward for hiding in the building, and the civilian deaths are all his fault," do you think that would help mollify people?

We could look to Philadelphia's experience for a partial answer.

A basic application that I can see is for Iran and to a degree, Syria.

I think that both have elite forces that can fight in a similar manner, and a larger arsenal of somewhat larger rockets. The may be less timid than before this war (to the degree that they were timid).

Only to a point. The military leadership of both countries may not be willing to accept the high cost of infratructure damage. My guess is that Syriah sees its arsenal as a deterrent, not as an offensive weapon. Hizbullah however was willing to let Lebanon get pounded, as it is an organisation within Lebanon, and not nominally responsible for the well-being of Lebanon's citizens.

I suspect the fact that Lebanon's recovery was coming along so well was what sparked this battle. It seemed as if they were fading in relevance, which meant their pre-kidnapping rockets (and the kidnapping itself) were attempts to draw attention. On the other side, Israel misread this as a sign of weakness and pounced.

In hindsight it would have been smarter for Israel to deal with the Lebanese government after the kidnappings, working to project an image of a nation that respects its neighbours. That, more than any military campaign, would have weakened Hizbullah.

They are only really applicable to organized resistance against an invading or occupying army.

There seems to me that there are important situational differences between defendind against an invader and resisting an occupation that gave Hezbolla great advantages over Hamas, for instance. Most would apply in Iraq to a lesser degree.

Hezbolla apparently was able to set up a strong leadership hierarchy and organize and train it’s soldiers. In the occupied territories the Israelis have much better intelligence and much more freedom to act on it. One way I have heard that sources are created is to arrest, possibly torture, a Palestinian and threaten action against their family if they didn’t cooperate. Another method is to threaten to out the person as a spy, whether it is true or not, if they don’t become one. This is a death sentence. With specific informationabout who is who in the resistance leadership they are able to attack specific houses or autos and kill important leaders and disrupt the Resistance leadership. There goes the organization, leadership and training of resistance forces.

Israel is also able to prevent construction of fortified positions in the occupied territories. Likewise, when Israel rockets or bombs a house or business and says it was a place where bombs or rockets or other weapons were being built, it is very possibly true. They are able to identify those places and are free to destroy them.

I also expect that because of the way the game is played that supporters of Hezbolla are much more likely to supply them with sophisticated weapons than are the supporters or users of Hamas. That could change. If I was Planning the response by Iran to an attack by the U.S. or Israel, I would try to establish a network to quickly supply shoulder fired anti-tank and anti-aircraft rockets to anyone in the surrounding countries that would be willing to fire them. Anything in the air or any armored vehicle would be a target.

I agree that there are lessons from Lebanon that others will learn and also that the whole operation was a morale booster and recruitment booster for the Muslim resistance.

There are people in the US military generally called "targeteers". The process of deciding what weapons to use on what targets has a great many nuances. Bomb or missile type. Explosive weight, Fuze settings, which can be extremely complex (e.g., Dear Mr. Bomb. Go through three floors of this building and then make the earth move). Guidance.

How is there any comparability to an air campaign against "soft" and mobile targets in an urban area, or above-ground electrical generating stations, and a campaign against a hardened nuclear engineering base?

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

And who were those rockets and missiles they fired across the border aimed at?

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

And the definition of "total victory" is, precisely, what?
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

my, you are an optimistic one. I hope so.

"This phucker is going to war with Iran BEFORE the mid-term elections!"

I think that may be a tight time frame, although there is definitely afoot a deliberate strategy to get fear and terror out there in the electorate. My best guess is the next two years is when the Bushbag and the neocon boys try to push for serious Iran action.

Why didn'the US oppose an action that would obviously have an unpredictable impact on the already volital region? Why didn't the US demand the Isrealis hold off.

Because Bush wants to go to war with Iran. He told the American public this over 6 months ago. The Israli's were the precursor attack on Hezbollah, which Cheney and Bush, have told us repeatedly is being sponsored by Iran. Gingrich told us that the initiation of Israel bombing Lebanon would be the catalyst for WWIII, several weeks ago.  Now that Israel has lost the fight with Hezbollah, Bush pronounced today, that 'we cannot let Iran take over the ME"

Seymour Hersch, also has an article detailing how this was all planned by the Bush administration with their foreknowledge, and that both Israel and USA were simply waiting for the right incident to start the massive bombing Israel engaged in. REcall, this all started over 2 Israeli's soldiers being kidnapped, and the response of Israel to Hezbollah was totally overwhelming for the magnitude of that event.

Dan K, at least you now find the various explanations that are being put forward unconvincing.

That's more promising than many others here, so I hope you won't mind me singling you out in a post that is really directed at everyone.

On July 27 I put forward a 16 point analysis in reply to a theory from Todd Gitlin and Sam Blumenthal which you also seemed to regard as plausible.

I claimed that:

1. Neither Israel nor the US are attempting to destroy Hezbollah.

2. Both intend a settlement meeting Hezbollah's demands - a prisoner exchange ending the ongoing imprisonment of Lebanese by Israel long after it withdrew from Lebanon, and return of the small piece of Lebanon Israel retained after withdrawing on the pretext that it was actually Syrian.

3. Both are aware that failing to destroy Hezbollah and meeting its demands will actually strengthen Hezbollah rather than weaken it and that this will strengthen Hamas rather than weaken it.

4. Both are convinced that Israel must withdraw from the West Bank for any durable peace.

5. Both are aware that evacuating the settlers will be extremely difficult while a large extremist minority of Israelis determined to hold on to "judea and samaria" are able to mobilize wider opposition to "retreating under fire" and "rewarding terrorist attacks".

6. Both are aware that the Palestine Authority's proposal for an international force to replace the Israeli occupation troops is essential for actually evacuating the West Bank and that unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza instead of reaching agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization has only resulted in unnecessary chaos.

7. Israel is demanding an international force on its borders whereas previously it opposed any such constraints for reasons other than schizophrenia.

8. The reasons are that Israel now knows that the US will not continue funding "Greater Israel" expansionism so there is no further benefit to Israel in maintaining fluid and ambiguous borders wherever its tanks last stopped.

9. Both know that no international force can be introduced into south Lebanon without Hezbollah's consent since only the Israelis are willing to spend blood and treasure on fighting Hezbollah at all and nobody else will do it for them.

10. Both expect Hezbollah to consent to an international force because both do know that Hezbollah is in fact a Lebanese national resistance rather than a proxy arm of Iran mythically bent on "killing jews" out of the sheer anti-semitic malice that Israeli propagandists portray to the weak minded.

11. Linkage between the prisoner exchange for Lebanon and Gaza and the introduction of an international force into Lebanon opens up possibilities for speeding up the evacuation of the West Bank with the introduction of an international force there to be carried out by a government that has shown just how tough and resolute it is in massacring Lebanese civilians and "forcing" the "terrorist enemy" to accept an international force in much the same sort of way that Nixon "forced" Vietnam to let the Americans depart and take their POWs with them by escalating the war to bomb Hanoi a few weeks before signing the peace agreements that had been on the table for years.

12. Removing the albatross of Israeli occupation will very explicably remove a major obstacle to democratic revolution in the region - the regimes will no longer be able to blame Israel for their own inadequacies.

13. Doing it in a way that strengthens Hezbollah and Hamas while highlighting the complete impotence of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and not even bothering to talk to Syria and Iran will help undermine the autocracies even more rapidly and will also directly help undermine sectarianism in Iraq.

14. The current policies would be insane if US policy was still in the pre-9/11 era of seeking stability and stagnation under the existing autocracies and Israel. But that policy would be insane in the light of having blown up so spectacularly with the World Trade Center towers.

15. The current policies are not insane if in fact the US does aim to end tyranny in the middle east regardless of whether or not the results of democratic revolution are anti-US islamist parties such as the Iraqi Daawa party allied to Hezbollah, (whose Prime Minister just addressed the US Congress), the Lebanese Government (including Hezbollah) or the Palestine Authority Government (Hamas), all of which came to power in US supported free elections.

16. People who regard it as sane to keep the Middle East stagnant with nothing better for young men to do than become Al Quaeda jihadis will naturally regard it as insane to undermine the status quo at all, let alone as ruthlessly as the US and Israel are now doing it. But if its really urgent to evacuate the West Bank, killing a few hundred Lebanese to speed things up in the adaptation of Israeli public opinion makes a lot more sense than Brezinzki funding Al Queda to fight the Soviets. Remember the Bushies aren't committed to democracy because they are not ruthless imperialist scum like their predecessors but because they simply have no other long term option for draining the swamps that breed real jihadis - the type that hit New York, as opposed to Hezbollah guerillas who are defending against Israeli aggression.

At the time there was a lot of debate about whether Israel could and whether it should destroy Hezbollah. Now there is general agreement not only that it hasn't, but that it couldn't and a lot more speculation that they were stupid to even try.

Would you agree that my point 1 has stood up better than other speculations so far?

What about my point 2? Would you dispute now that Israel intends to meet Hezbollah's terms (exchange of prisoners and withdrawal from Chebaa farms area) since it is withdrawing without having recovered its prisoners? Was any other outcome ever possible?

What about my point 9? At the time there was a lot of talk about whether an international force was practical and what sort of rules of engagement it should have to disarm Hezbollah and whether or how Hezbollah could be forced to accept it.

Does anyone now still seriously imagine that the French, Indonesian, Malaysian and Turkish troops etc are not going to suppress Hezbollah but with its consent?

Can anyone who offers a different explanation for what is going on (eg preparations for war with Syria and/or Iran, insanity, defence from Hezbollah terrorism or whatever) provide a link showing that they also accurately predicted these 3 aspects of the outcome, based on their theory?

Back in March I argued that the big focus on Iran was primarily a distraction aimed at Israeli public opinion to emphasize that the US was Israel's resolute defender at the same time as requiring Israel to get out of the West Bank.

Does that and the remainder of my 16 points look more plausible to you now than it did then?

Was Olmert supposed to second-guess what they were telling him?

In a word: yes.

If you look at the history of civilian control over the military, the great wartime civilian leaders - Lincoln, Churchill, Roosevelt etc. - ALWAYS held the military brass accountable . That's why Lincoln fired McClellan, who he accused of having "a case of the slows".  A good leader has no time for excuses.  You either perfom or you're out.  That's why GWB will go down as probably the very worst wartime leader we've ever had.