Or Israel could have stayed home and saved billions of dollars, hundreds of human lives, left children on both sides untraumatized and swapped for the 2 kidnapped soldiers as they still will have to do. Can you say prisoner swap? They couldnt last week but they have learned to say it this week.

Anyone that wants to make a quick million can just start making yellow flags with AK 47 assault rifles on them, Thats the hottest selling Item in the Muslim World this week, The t-Shirts are a close second. Who could have ever imagined 2 months ago that Sunni Muslims would be wearing Shia t-shirts all over the Middle East. Move over CHE, Forget about the Alamo, Dixie is for losers, There is a new set of Rebel Icons in town!

I often find it curious too that few if any demands are ever placed on the Arab nations in the Middle East, when the Palestinian question is raised.  The best answer I can come up with for it is that it is Israel that is occupying territory outside of their recognized borders, not other nations.  It is Israel that is prohibiting non-Jews from immigrating to Israel and becoming citizens of Israel.  And, it is Israel that is attempting to forcefully grow its population by accepting as many of the worlds Jews as want to live there.

Of course, to balance that, we have only the Arab states that insist upon driving another state into the sea.  Only the Arab states insist on destroying another state in the area.  And, primarily the Arab states are supporting terrorist activities against their neighbors.

One would think that the first demands to be made would be for the Arab states to stop all of the above activities, those activities being against both the UN Charter and any reasonable definition of responsible behavior by nations.  And, of course it is far, far easier for the Arab states to give in to such demands than it is for Israel to retreat from all of the occupied Arab territories, and to retreat from their open door policy to the world's Jews. 

Hoppy in Sacramento

Third, the role of France is key. It played a critical role in implementing this ceasefire, and as I write about on The American Prospect website this week-http:www.prospect.org, France has the opportunity to play a hefty role in the region ongoing. It has the largest Jewish community in Europe, an engaged and active community--and it is the only force in Europe who can really engage with the Arab countries. The U.S. needs France. And so does Israel.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

um, but I think two words complicate your contention that France has recently had it all hunky dory in Africa: Ivory Coast.

To have lost that international support was indeed a strategic blunder, but it wasn't because of neoconservatives. It was a failure of tactics, not strategy...Had Israel gone in with half a dozen full brigades right from the beginning, I think the results, both military and political, would have been very different.

sigh...it's the inevitable 'we should have hit harder/sent more troops' retrograde apologia, back from its hiatus after Vietnam.

btw, what you are describing is a a failure in strategy, as the Rumsfeld doctrine is strategically different than putting 'boots on the ground,' however more than that, it is a failure of vision, where deluded people believe that military might alone is a solution.

Also, I presume that you're an American, and I find it interesting how many American Jews are willing to throw Israeli troops into the fray--somehow, I doubt you've ever had any Lebanese mud on your boots, so in this case, you're just another member of the Fighting 101 Keyboarders...

HUNGHH! KILL MORE BETTER! HUNHH!

Do you perceive there to be any alternatives other than accepting Israel as a Jewish state and "driving Israel into the sea"?

Which states do you think "insist" on "driving Israel into the sea"?

Terrorist activities - that kind of depends on how you are defining things.  Israel just got finished targeting civilian power generators and other civilian infrastructure essential for the maintenance of life in Lebanon.

Just saying. 

btw, what you are describing is a a failure in strategy, as the Rumsfeld doctrine is strategically different than putting 'boots on the ground,'

At the risk of getting into a brawl over a minor point I must say that no, what I talked about was tactics, not strategy.  Tactics are HOW a strategy is carried out.  In this case, the strategy was to degrade Hezbollah's capacity to threaten Israel.  It had a choice in terms of how it carried out that strategy, either through heavy armored invasion or air power.  I believe it chose the wrong tactic.

Also, I presume that you're an American, and I find it interesting how many American Jews are willing to throw Israeli troops into the fray--somehow, I doubt you've ever had any Lebanese mud on your boots, so in this case, you're just another member of the Fighting 101 Keyboarders...

The idea that you need to be a combat veteran before you can legitimately call for a hawkish position on something is so mind-bogglingly stupid that it's amazing you still hear it so often.  It is the argument of people who are out of arguments, and are grasping at whatever thin strands of logic they can find.

I find it interesting that Israel has a very strong peace movement but there is none in the Palestinian world. Israel pulled out of Gaza and the Palestinians used it as a launching pad for rockets rather than as a base for building a country.

Israel pulled out of Lebanon and Hezbollah used the opportunity to build massive military positions and amass over 13,000 rockets.

Why should anyone really believe that if Israel turned the West Bank over to the Palestinians they would use it for anything but rocket attacks?

Until the Palestinians and the Arab world are willing to accept a two state solution, all the negotiations in the world are unlikely to have any result other than the Palestinian negotiator walking out just as Arafat did.

Yet, it's always far easier for people to demand that Israel negotiate rather than face the real difficulty of requiring the Arab states to accept the existence of Israel as a Jewish State.

Cheers.

Abu El Banat
Father of (3) Daughters

Hoppy

You don't seem to be to aware of the facts.

Israel does not bar non-Jews from immigrating to Israel. There is just a right of return for all Jews. Israel has about 1 million not Jewish citizens. The Saudis for example bar Palestinians from becoming citizens of Saudi Arabia and after the first Gulf War evicted the Palestinians from their oil fields.

Israel acquired the Palestinians from Egypt and Jordan in 1967. Both nations, and their Palestinian residents engaged in a war to exterminate Israel and lost.

After the Six Day War the Israelis were to over confident and too uninterested in the Palestinians. They thought they could make a deal with Jordan to take the Palestinians. Unfortunately too often the Arabs ofter peace but talk of the Zionist entitity.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Just as Israel targetted according to their goals, and as best they could, so did Hezbollah target their rockets as best they could and according to their goals.  Those rockets are not precision weapons by any definition, and Hezbollah lacked the forward fire controllers to correct their aim after the first few rockets.  The "Evul" involved here was the war, not the specific tactics of either side.  (My opinion, of course.) 

Hoppy in Sacramento

Well you got one thing right. Israel, for the most part, thinks the whole democracy thing for Arabs is a total crock. But, because they know the religious wingding in the WH is caught in the throes of his visions, no problemo with going along with some of the rhetoric for PR purposes.

After all, the decision to go to war under the battle cry of "Operation Just Reward", was quickly amended to "Operation Change Direction" once some genius figured out that questions such as "reward for what? exactly?" might interfere with the "it's self-defense, no, it really is all about our soldiers, really it is this time" meme.

They could have called it "Operation Partuition: Remember Ron Arad?"

Interesting that Peretz is waving his "dialogue" flags again. This time he's including Syria along with the Palestinians. Olmert seems far weaker in that he's more vulnerable and perhaps, not as personally tough as Peretz is. Dan Halutz is in very big trouble for selling stocks on the day of the Kidnapping. In addition to questions about his planning, execution, etc and why was his first message (since the onset of the attacks) to his IDF officers an official warning to them not to talk to the media?

Israel isn't a model of stability at present.

Everybody likes a good turkey shoot, Thats what Iraq started out as, us killing them, the good guys killing the bad guys, fighting for freedom, adapting to win! Lieing to leverage public opinion! Little boys telling big stories so they could get their way!

Reality is quite another story, Its an old concept actully, the neiborhood bully gets a bloody nose and goes home and tells his mom that the kids in the neiborhood dont fight fair anymore! Believe it or not Israel took a old fashioned butt whipping on the ground and that made the fat lady scream! Israel has never offered up much for casualties on the battlefield, this time they cut and ran a few days ago and hid out in the Lebanese Army compound to save themselves about the same time the latest hyped up liquid bomb non ticket holding terrorists were offered up to the irrealivent media gods.

Shock and Awe is the new Shuck and Jive! Bryan Lee

You undermine your position by overstatements such as

 I find it interesting that Israel has a very strong peace movement but there is none in the Palestinian world .

None is simply untrue. The Palestinians who signed the Geneva accord , the ones who participate in Bitter Lemons , want peace. 

Why should anyone really believe that if Israel turned the West Bank over to the Palestinians they would use it for anything but rocket attacks?

Because everyone knows that the majority of the Palestinians would bake their bread and make their garden grow.

 It's perhaps  difficult for you to write precisely when you feel great emotion. But you would be more effective if you asked why the Palestinian peace movement is so small relative to the Isreali one , or how Isreal could lift its control of the West Bank when leaving South Lebanon turned it into a launch pad for Hezbo missiles.

The air campaign was not successful in getting rid of the kytusha launchers. However, you are wrong about it not being successful. It wipe out most if not all of Hezbollah's long range missiles.

Except for all the ones fired at Haifa and parts south? I'd love to see any kind of proof of this. Colour me skeptical.

Indeed, if Israel showed any success at finding and destroying them, it would make military sense to Hezbollah tolaunch as many of them as possible as soon as possible, before they get destroyed on the ground. If you're going to lose it in the long run, then use it first.

The relatively few launches suggests that they might well have been overall secure, and that their reserve is largely intact.

It also leveled Shiaa areas, home to the Hezbollah, while leaving Christian, Sunni and Druze areas largely intact.

'largely intact' seems to be an acknowledgement of fairly indiscriminate bombing which affected all Lebanese ethnic groups. Congratulations to Israel.

On the other hand, crowing about levelling Shia areas smacks very much of targeting civilian populations. Was this the plan? Blow up all the civilian facilities and residences in Shia areas in the hopes of getting a few Hezbollah offices?

My advice is don't offer up war crimes and claim they're proof of victory.

By hitting power facilities, bridges and the like it made it harder for Hezbollah to get rearmed.

Unproven and largely unproveable. Hitting power facilities makes it harder for Hezbollah to rearm? I'm sorry, but that makes no logical sense.

You could argue reasonably that bombing bridges and roads might make it harder for Hezbollah to rearm, but historically, examples such as the Ho Chi Minh trail in Vietnam show us that supply routes can be very difficult to interdict. Given the experience in Vietnam, where the US attacked the supply routes aggressively for years, I can see no realistic possibility that temporary bombing is going to make any real difference.

And again, we're talking deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure.

I believe you only partially right about Israeli intelligence. Perhaps given the coming enquiries this will become clearer but they seem to have known a great deal about Hezbollah's capabilites it was just difficult to hit the moving launchers. Hezbollah having received from Iran Russian RPG's that could pierce their tanks they were adjusting accordingly.

Uh huh. Well, we'll just wait for the coming inquiries. Misjudging the RPG's was an intelligence failure that lost a lot of tanks and a lot of lives. Let's see what else got misjudged.

The Israel public was willing, desirous even, to continue and expand the ground campaign.

And yet, I have the impression that support for the war was declining in Israel.

It's always that way, support for war is always high in its opening phase. American support for the invasion of Iraq was unanimous. It's not so unanimous now. Way back in 1914, everyone was all for what they thought would be a short sharp war to sort things out.

But then time drags on, the risks become real. Bodies start coming home. And after a while, the war isn't popular any more. Except for groups like the 101st Fighting Keyboarders.

The biggest problem for Israel was that Condolezza Rice and the U.S. State Department could not take the international heat.

So you would have won in another week? Another month? Another two months? Another six? A year? Hey, given five years Israel would have kicked their ass but good? Okay, sure. Whatever.

How is this assertion in any way meaningful or useful. It seems to me that you are simply setting up a 'stabbed in the back' argument to blame someone else for Israel's military failure. Do you feel that's really constructive?

The reality is that the U.S. ran determined interference for Israel from start to finish diplomatically and in the UN, and ensured it was resupplied on an urgent basis with jet fuel, cluster bombs and precision guided munitions.

Indeed, in cease fire resolution negotiations, the US simply advanced proposals that Ohlmert had already made... including Ohlmert's proposal of a UN buffer force. How is Rice acting as Ohlmert's diplomatic arm and seeking resolutions based on Ohlmert's own positions stabbing Israel in the back? All the evidence suggests that Israel was looking hard for an exit.

Finally, if the U.S. faced heat don't you think this related to Israel's own conduct? Including the massacre at Qaina, the attacks on civilian refugee convoys, the killing of hundreds of civilians, the targeting of Lebanese civilian infrastructure and the targeting of Lebanese Army and UN units. You bragged of Israel blowing up bridges and power stations, but these actions were clearly attacks upon a civilian population.

In this wired world, pictures and reports of dead babies and bombed civilians flashed around the world instantly, to Arabs and Christians alike. How do you feel that this would not produce heat?

The killing of civilians and destruction of civilian infrastructure were not accidents or regrettable by products. Israel deliberately chose particular strategies that would inevitably produce these results, whether those results were specifically chosen. If I go to a picnic and start randomly shooting off a pistol, and end up hitting something, it is not a defense to say I didn't mean to hit someone specifically. Victims came inevitably out of the choice of the course of conduct.

Explain to me how this should not produce heat? Or why Israel should not be criticized for bombing a convoy of fleeing refugees? Show me how Qaina was justified?

The end your piece is the typical refrain. Israel couldn't defend itself,

The failure to engage details meaningfully, and your dismissive slur suggests that you really have no counter argument, but simply do not want, emotionally, to recognize the validity of mine.

My point was not that Israel could not defend itself, but rather that a particular military strategy offered up by Bradthedad was utterly without merit... in his own words 'mind bogglingly something or other.'

Zeev Schiff and many of Israel's military commentators believe that Israel should have launched its ground campaign a lot earlier and that they would be successful.

Fine. Explain how.

I do not know if that is correct

Well, that answers that question.

like the folks here who suggest Israelis live with missiles coming at them on a regular basis. From their bunkers they were urging a stronger response, not less.

That passage reeks of self pity. No one suggests that Israelis live with missiles coming at them on a regular basis.

But let's be fair. There were no missiles raining down before Israel started this war. Israelis in the north were not living with missiles coming at them on a regular basis... or at all.

There had been no missiles. There were no missiles raining down across the Lebanese border.

In six years before this all started up, there had been a total of six fatalities along the Israeli side of the border. There was a steady history of unnecessary border provocations on both sides, but the situation was largely quiet and stable

When the War started, that was when the missiles started. 3000 to 4000 missiles rained down, and you yourself acknowledge that there doesn't seem to have been much success taking out the Katyushas.

So a continuation of the war would have probably resulted in another 3000 to 4000... or 5000 to 10,000. These aren't accurate rockets, but sooner or later they were likely to hit something important.
And your comments with regard to the longer range rockets are speculative. So its entirely possible that all of the longer range rockets that they had would have been deployed.

Which means that the war guaranteed missiles.

I find your mocking tone rather offensive.

Father of (3) daughters? The Palestinians have no peace movement?

Balderdash.

Hizballah is not a synonym for Palestine They have their own agenda and do NOT represent anyone but themselves and only nominally, Lebanon. The problem with the faction of "Israel right or wrong" zealots is that they can not tell the difference.

CSPAN junkies visit http://spannerbackup.ipbhost.com

The Washington Post reports Hizbullah is refusing to disarm and the Lebanese government is not going to force it to do so.

Fouad Seignora is on record as saying that such disarmament is an internal Lebanese matter and that the two relevant U.N. resolutions are unacceptable abridgements of Lebanese sovereignty.

Mahmoud Amadinejad has taken the same position on uranium enrichment.

Such is the state of "diplomacy". How many of you will immediately find ways to blame it all on the Bush Administration and its neocons?

Meanwhile, in today's Ha'aretz, Ari Shavit writes A Spirit of Absolute Folly

Ring any bells?

What was that fellow's name that got a combat command, with his bosses knowing he had never actually in a shooting situation? Ikenhour? Izzenhoard...ah. Eisenhower.

For that matter, Alfred Thayer Mahan had had ships, but didn't really have experience being shot at.

The tactical problem was simultaneously using principally heavy units, not optimized for urban combat, while encountering an enemy that had taken on excellent tank ambush skills. While it definitely isn't perfect, the US finds the lighter, wheeled Stryker often more valuable in cities than the tracked Abrams tank or the Bradley IFV.

It's quite interesting to look at some of the Russian experience with armor in cities, as early as the mid- to late-nineties in Chechnya. A slightly more recent Australian analysis also gives insight. There seems to have been a lack of reading such things in the IDF. Some somewhat dated US thinking is fairly technical, but one of its salient points is certain platforms, such the M728 Combat Engineer Vehicle with its short-range, high-capacity (165mm) "bunker buster" gun, have been retired without replacements.

There's increasing interest in robots, but they aren't yet available. Israel has deployed a urban combat IFV but it's not clearly effective. There's a good deal of Russian work going on in urban-focused vehicles. Clearly, the armored Humvee is too light.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Can an invading army win a war of attrition against a local resistance...There aren't that many successful historical examples.

No? How about the European colonialists of the last 5 centuries - and especially Great Britain? They successful conquered and held one-third of the world...and were on their way to one-half. Only the fratricidal World Wars I and II intervened and fatally weakened them. Native resistance amounted to nil. Nada.

Only a blindindly stupid, politically correct, defeatist could miss something so obvious. But that's exactly what you are.

The idea that you need to be a combat veteran before you can legitimately call for a hawkish position on something is so mind-bogglingly stupid that it's amazing you still hear it so often. It is the argument of people who are out of arguments, and are grasping at whatever thin strands of logic they can find.

Sorry, but this is a pathetically flimsy argument--in your insular environment, you overestimate the power of a military force to subjugate a people on their own soil, a stupid strategy that didn't work in Vietnam, isn't working in Iraq, and didn't work for the Israelis in any of their incursions into Lebanon, yet your 'hawkish' ego refrains from learning from history, preferring to wallow in 'kill 'em all' atavism.

Since children always tend to rebel against their parents, I look forward to your kids becoming anti-war activists.

Tel Aviv is approximately 20 km from the closest point in the West Bank. Ben Gurion airport is 9.5 km.  Here's a link to a map.  Israel's central plain is densely populated - far fewer rockets are liable to land harmlessly in empty fields.   One lucky shot at the airport is all that's needed for mass civilian casulties.

There's no tech fix for this problem.  (And as seen in Gaza, firing artillery at rockets launched from behind civilians is liable to result in civilian casulties.)  Some responsible force needs to be in the West Bank to stop the missiles from being fired to begin with.       

I love you too, Sunshine.

Five centuries of European colonialism do a counter example (of sorts make). But to paraphrase Santana, "Those who do not understand history are compelled to make it up."

In point of fact, relatively little of your five centuries of European colonialism supports your thesis all that much.

Take the New world and Australia. These were quite advanced European societies, with sophisticated firearms, land and sea transportation, medicine, technology and other tools which were meeting up with stone age societies. Now, not to take anything away from the Aztec, the Inca, the Maya, the Iroquois confederacy etc. But right from the start, the situation is amazingly lopsided.

And in fact, its worse than that. What we saw in contact was the transfer of European and African diseases to a virgin new world population. Smallpox, Flu, others, just raged through the world. Entire communities died off. Raging epidemics chopped the new world population, perhaps by more than half. Population collapse brought about economic and political collapses, communities abandoned their traditional territories and move din on their neighbors. Meanwhile, Europeans moving in brought with them a whole wave of lifestyle changing goods, including horses, woven cloth, metal pots and pans, alcohol and firearms. Most of which could not be manufactured by the local economies. The result was further devastation of local economies and trading patterns, social dislocation and disfunction.

When Columbus discovered the New World, North America was home to as many as 20 million Indians. By 1900 there were barely 100,000 left.

The lesson is that genocide works... if you have the stomach for it. I don't think the Israelis do. Maybe you do, but that's between you and God.

In any case, Hezbollah is not a stone age society, they are immune to all the regular diseases, they are as technologically and socially sophisticated as their enemies, and their culture is not vulnerable to the introduction of drugs or new consumer goods... at least, not in the sense that the Indians and Aborigines were.

So that example just don't work very well...

Now, India and Indonesia, the East Indies, that's a quite a different matter. The history of colonialism there is as long or longer than the New Worlds, but it happened very differently.

Y'see. The East Indies were themselves an advanced technological and literate civilization. They were also a highly fractured and feudal civilization.

It's interesting that the Unitary Asian states, Japan, Thailand and China, were all strong enough to tell the west to go get bent.

Where the west took over was with societies where there was not a central government, but rather, a series of squabbling, warring principalities.

And they came, not as conquerers or occupiers, but as traders. The original traders in the east were the Portugese, who established trading posts, and through those trading posts managed a bit of local control. They were followed by the Dutch. Then the French and English, who fought it out. Interesting historical note, at one point, the French had influence over 1/3 of India, equal to or greater than the British at the time. The Europeans allied with and bribed local princes and princelings, establishing trading relations, and using newer and better technology to consolidate their grip. A key aspect of their power, however, were co-opting the local populations. Politically, the British recognized the sovereignty of endless Indian Maharaj, Raja's and Poohbahs, treating these people as sovereign states and even allowing them their own armies. The British also maintained their power, not through their own army, but through the creation of local armies, and native guards. Even during the great Sepoy Rebellion, much of the contest was between Indians fighting other Indians. Like a creeping ivey, the British insinuated themselves into the fabric of the Indian economy and culture, even as they took control of it. Same with the Dutch in Indonesia, the French in Indochina.
So, it wasn't really a question of colonial powers ruling through brute force... it was all kisses and lots of lubrication.

Now, it don't look to me like Israel is going to have any luck raising a native army to keep a lid on the wogs and do its dirty work. So much for Empire, eh? Chip Chip Cheerio? Nor does it seem that Israel has much of a technological advantage, and its definitely got no economic leverage or relationships...

Turning now to Africa, its worth noting that Africa was well known to Europe for centuries and centuries. It was the continent closest and most accessible to them. Bot the Phoenicians and the Portugese sailed the coasts of Africa. As the New World was purified through genocide, and as the far east feudal regions were gnawed away, there was no wave of settlement and colonialism in Africa. At best there were trading posts and way stations established by various European powers. But they left the locals strictly alone for the most part.

The big wave of European Colonialism comes roundabout 1870-1900. By this time, the technological advantage of the Europeans had grown to the point where it was all but insurmountable. Machine guns against spears, for Christ sakes. And the Europeans were not afraid to wipe out entire populations... go read 'King Leopold's Ghosts' for a handy account of hidden genocide. At the same time, local populations were fractious, disunited and conflict ridden.

What else? Japan? Yeah, the era of Japan's colonial subjugation lasted a few hours as they started to come to grips with the fact that the Great White Fleet was a wake up call.

China? Never conquered. Trading concessions exacted from a weak dynasty and a technologically lagging society. But weak as it was, China was able to preserve its independence. Heroin did damage, true.

But its not like we can just introduce heroin to Lebanon...

In the meantime, we have numerous little failures and bumps in the road for European colonialism... long term failure to make inroads into Africa right up until the 1870's, a perpetually uneasy British rule in India baseed on perpetual accomodation, outright failure of British expansion into Afghanistan...

Then there's the middle east and north africa, the society which Europe had by far the most experience dealing with...

Colonial domination was slow there. Napoleon won a battle but couldn't stay, about 1800. The French conquered Algeria around 1850. The British, French and Italians all saw their colonial ambitions end in diaster in Ethiopia which got on the ball and turned into a bit of an Empire on its own. The British got massacred in Sudan, their influence in Egypt amounted to being the prettier alternative to the Ottoman's whose grip had been loosened. Arabia, Iran, Mespotamia, Jordan, Palestine, Yemen, all stayed out of European grips, either locally governed or with some fealty to Ottoman or Iranian powers.

A few outliers, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Aden were all nibbled off, but that was it.

Even when the Europeans finally moved in, after 1914, they found that they couldn't hold it. Iraq broke out in revolt and by 1922 the Brits were looking for a way out. Control in Egypt was light and fading. Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the Persian Gulf states and Iran all asserted and maintained their independence.

Y'see, they were a bit too advanced, their societes a bit too united and sophisticated, the Europeans couldn't really hang on...

Egypt and Iraq were reoccupied for WWII, but then it was over and the grip was lost. France tried to hold Algeria, but discovered that it couldn't. End of story.

So much for colonialism.

So what were you calling me? 'blindindly stupid, politically correct, defeatist' Thanks a bunch. Remind me to tell you what I think of you, sometime.

Listening to you and looking at the demographics one would conclude that the Israelis should build their own ovens...or move to Beverly Hills and Manhattan.

I'm not sure that is the reasonable conclusion to be drawn. Strikes me as something of an exaggeration, actually.

I realize your reply was directed at Brad's proposal

Indeed it was. Nice of you to notice.

but I wonder if you can envision any sort of strategy which would have allowed the Israelis to defeat Hizbullah?

Smallpox laden blankets as gifts? Large quantities of heroin distributed at low low prices? Broadcasting Janet Jackson's nipple malfunction?

I dunno. No one was asking me too, but I suppose I could go off and think about that.

Did you even try?

Was I supposed to?

Have you noticed my posts? They're humungously long and getting longer, particularly as people demand that I dissect five centuries of history.

And you'd like me to double or triple the length of my posts with unsolicited blueprints randomly solving different world problems.

Son, you just don't have the bandwidth for that!

Do you want to see Israel "wiped off the map"?

Nope.

Do you have the honesty to admit it?

Wow. You know, I don't have an answer to a question that offensive that doesn't involve language which would melt my keyboard.

So, tell ya what. I invite you to say that to my face, someday.

They envisioned the Hizbullah position as a sort of Maginot line and recommended a massive air drop (or concentrated and focused push) to the Litani which would completely isolate Hisbullah...which could them be starved and slaughtered. That, apparently was the original Israeli military plan which was nixed by Olmert for reasons as yet unexplained

Interesting, I hadn't heard of that one. Sounds superficially plausible, and dramatically suicidal.

The key concept here is that Hezbollah was a sort of 'maginot line.' I'm not sure that's an accurate construction, and I'm somewhat dubious of a plan which relies upon that sort of construction.

Essentially, what you are describing seems to be a plan to use massive military force to surround Hezbollah, or capture its territory and literally blockade it. Or to simply put it in a big cage and begin squeezing away.

Would it have worked? Well, my guess is possibly, but probably not. We know now that the intelligence on Hezbollahs assets and deployments was extremely poor. We also know that Hezbollah stockpiled large quantities of ammunition and supplies. So Hezbollah may well have been anticipating that sort of strategy.

Which means that the 'caging the beast and letting it starve' strategy was not going to work quickly or easily. Hezbollah might have retained operational resilience, even in *your* best case, for months on end. This means that in financial terms, you may well break the bank... tens of billions of dollars at least. It also guarantees heavy ground fighting, and exorbitant Israeli casualties.

But theoretically, if they were willing to spend the money, take several months, and risk hundreds or thousands of casualties... it might be possible. Not a battle that I personally would want to be in the middle of, in either case.

I'm not sure how you'd define 'winning' in a situation like that. You'd be in the position of trying to grind boulders to rocks, rocks to pebbles, pebbles to sand, sand to dust. At what point are you actually able to say you've won and go home... because the day after that, some punk kid is going to pick up an AK47 or throw a rock.

The 'cage' would have also scooped up about a million Shiites. I'm not sure how that would have worked? Starve them too? Genocide? Expulsion or ethnic cleansing? Or do you let them sit there and be living cover for Hezbollah? Worse, let them aid and abet Hezbollah?

And if you are attempting to control this population, you are back to that whole 'occupation' thing I visited in my reply to BradtheDad. It just don't work.

Longterm, of course, there's no alternative to the grim scenario you paint - kill or be killed, genocidal slaughters, massive numbers of refugees. Welcome to the real world.

Bullshit. Of all your comments, this is the most offensive. You spit on Jesus and Martin Luther King, Ghandi and god knows how many others. You spit on everything that makes us not a screaming ape. And you spit on untold generations of people who in their own small ways tried to make the world better instead of bloodier.

There has never been an act of murder that was ever necessary. There was always an alternative. There is always an alternative.

We are not foreordained to be monsters. Monstrosity is only the easy path, the apparently safe path.

We, and I say that about you, me, Israelis, Arabs, everyone of us, we can be better than that. It is available for us to reach down to our better natures, to forgive and love our enemies, to reach out and make peace, to work together.

It is not necessary to die by the sword you lived by. That's a choice, not fate.

So what were you calling me? 'blindindly stupid, politically correct, defeatist' Thanks a bunch. Remind me to tell you what I think of you, sometime.

I haven't even begin to tell you what a think of you. "Long-winded blowhard teaching history he doesn't understand" is a good beginning.

You claimed conquerors have a very difficult time winning a war of attrition against determined natives.

I countered with European colonialists - who conquered and held large parts of the world for quite a long time (as human affairs go)...and whose descendants still hold most of those conquests - as citizens of nations such as the United States, Canada, and Australia - or as dominant elements in native cultures...and whose cultures still remain dominant throughout most of the world.

You want to claim that example is misleading and irrelevant - because native American societies were primitive and vulnerable to disease, because India and the East Indies were fractured and feudal and were conquered more by "kisses and lubrication" (gag) than by brute force, because Africa was ignored until technological advance made it more desireable and accessable, becayse the Middle East and north Africa remained free of European control except around the edges (what BIG edges you have, grandma), and the unitary states escaped domination (what a whopper! China WAS conquered but fights between the various colonialists allowed it to escape...and Japan certainly was conquered and is now a part of the first - western - world).

In the context of the present thread Israel's very existance is proof of who you are and the deficiencies of your ideas. How did it gain independence...and keep that independence for more than 50 years if your ideas are correct? If it has no social, economic, or techonological advantages how is it that its people are so much wealthier than the surrounding Arab peoples? Why is its army so much better? Why is it the only capitalist democracy in the area? Why do Jews consistantly win Noble prizes and achieve so much in every civilized arena?

I haven't even begin to tell you what a think of you. "Long-winded blowhard teaching history he doesn't understand" is a good beginning.

Y'know, if you keep that up, it could start to get ugly.

You want to claim that example is misleading and irrelevant -

Only because it is. You can't replicate or apply the situation of Europeans successes exterminating Indians in the New World, manipulating feudal cultures in Southeast Asia, or overwhelming technological advantage in deep Africa to the situation in Lebanon. It's simply not a fit.

This is not a parlour game. You can provide examples, but they have to be applicable and relevant.

what big edges you have, grandma

Take a look at maps depicting the political world in the 16, 17th and 18th centuries, and what you'll note is that there are no inland penetrations by the Europeans. Their influence is principally along narrow sections of coast, and generally based in small ports and fortresses which were used as way stations for ships and trading posts for the purchase of slaves, ivory and other commodities.

(what a whopper! China WAS conquered but fights between the various colonialists allowed it to escape...

Maybe... or maybe not. Historically, Britain fought the opium wars with China, and Japan later fought its own war with China. There was the putdown of the Boxer rebellion, which involved a multinational force, which included the United States.

There was, however, no 'fight between colonialists', and with the exception of Japan and Russia (and small trading enclaves for Portugal in Macao and Britain in Hong Kong).

Rather, the 'fight' as you call it, was for trading rights, rather than territory, and it was adjudicated in quite a civilized fashion by gentlemen's agreements.

The Chinese government and imperial administration remained in nominal control of the country, though in deep decline, until the Kuomintang took it over and began a crash course of modernization. This was interrupted by the Japanese invasion of course. And eventually supplanted by the Communist takeover.

You might want to crack open the history book in this area. There are a number of very interesting works.

and Japan certainly was conquered and is now a part of the first - western - world).

When? Are you referring to the outcome of WWII? That's hardly the colonial era.

Prior to the colonial era, Japan was not conquered. Perry's Great White Fleet was a forceful trading mission, not a mission of conquest. The shock of it set the Japanese on a quest to modernize.

Thereafter, an increasingly modernized and aggressive Japan fought successful wars with China and Russia, winning territorial and political concessions each time. Going into WWI they picked the side of the allies, scooping up German possessions and expanding their territory. During the 1920's and 1930's they carved Manchuria off of China and made it into a puppet state. They then launched a second invasion of China.

The second invasion of China, as it turns out, was not a good idea, as it lead Japan into precisely the sort of insurgency/occupier issue that I complained of. The Japanese were never able to decisively dislodge either the Kuomintang or the Communists, and were stuck trying to hold what they had of the country down with massive armies. This may well have impaired their war effort and self defense capabilities leading to their eventual fall.

The fall of Japan as a result of WWII brought a fairly short lived American administration which left most Japanese institutions in place, was explicitly not colonial in any way, and departed as soon as it was practical.

One of the major concerns of course, was to avoid indigenous resistance by the Japanese. If the Japanese military resisted house by house and maintained an insurgent campaign, it was estimated that the losses would be huge.

The key was not only to beat the Japanese, but to have them surrender and accept that defeat.

In the context of the present thread Israel's very existance is proof of who you are and the deficiencies of your ideas.

How is that?

How did it gain independence...and keep that independence for more than 50 years if your ideas are correct?

1) Settling an area and expelling the original population from the territory with violence? Ethnic cleansing, basically.

2) Winning lots of wars and outside support.

If it has no social, economic, or techonological advantages how is it that its people are so much wealthier than the surrounding Arab peoples?

Didn't say that. What I said was that the degree of advantage was not sufficient to give command on this kind of battlefield. The issue is not one of relative wealth, or at least, not in the context you are asserting.

Gattling Guns vs Zulu Spears are one thing. Even a small technological or other advantage, used effectively in other situations gives an edge. The American sharpshooter rifles of the revolutionary period were just a little better than British rifles... but it was an advantage that told.

On the other hand, the British always had technological superiority over the IRA, and the French had technological superiority over the Algerians... but it didn't work out for them. The IRA and the Algerians had comparable weapons, not iron shod spears and bows and arrows, but firearms and explosives. This was close enough that in the right circumstances, the British and French advantage was meaningless.

To use the Lebanon example, the Israelis have a technological edge in Merkava tanks. Hezbollah didn't even have tanks. On the other hand, Hezbollah had RPG's which could destroy tanks... So their advantage was reduced or meaningless.

Why is its army so much better?

You mean the army that just lost a war to Hezbollah?

Compare Israel's military expenditures, on both a gross and a per capita basis to those of the other states in the region, and then you come back and tell me.

And at this point, I think I'll leave off before you start demanding that I explain why the grass is green.

Why is it the only capitalist democracy in the area? Why do Jews consistantly win Noble prizes and achieve so much in every civilized arena?

You think it an exageration to consider the destruction of Israel as a real possibility,,

Nope. I just don't see it as inevitable, or even all that likely under current circumstances.

but present all sorts of arguments demonstrating its military, economic, and technological vulnerability

I think my principle argument was that mind bogglingly stupid military plans will probably produced mind boggling military disasters. On this I'm backed up by history.

Particularly, my point was that the sort of plan Bradthedad was advocating was not going to work, and was not going to work in spectacularly unpleasant ways.

The discussion never came near Israel's prospects for survival or its long term social, political or economic issues. Those are very good topics by the way. But they weren't on the table.

and don't have the time or interest to offer counter-arguments.

I seem to be spending all my time responding to your attacks.

Is it my job to rebut or provide counter-arguments to my own arguments? Am I obliged to argue all viewpoints all the time? You're mistaking me for a liberal.

If you want to argue with me, fine. But I don't expect that I should be doing your job for you.

Then you claim you want to see Israel survive.

Well, I should know what I think, shouldn't I?

How believable is that?

Believability isn't relevant, what with it being true and all that.

Your opposition to the bypassing the Maginot line and caging the beast is that it was risky and Hizbullah might have survived for months. Well, gee whiz, that's just shocking.

Not quite. Any military plan sets out objectives. These plans must assume finite resources and the deployment of these resources within a period of time which will result in successful accomplishment of said objectives.

With infinite resources, you can succeed with any plan, no matter how dunderheaded. For instance, America could have won the Vietnam war by outfitting its soldiers with diapers and fluffy pillows and sending them against the Vietnamese... if you had a billion American soldiers. And if that didn't quite manage it, two billion would do the trick. Or six billion. The fact that you might be able to conquer vietnam with diapers and fluffy pillows and infinite numbers of soldiers doesn't mean its a good plan. If you've only got half a million soldiers, its a fatally bad plan.

Krauthammer's master plan seems to call for huge numbers of soldiers in hostile territory, surrounded inside and outside by the enemy, fighting a guerilla war of attrition. Something about it reminds me of Dien Bien Phu.

Now, could it work? Sure, if you had infinite numbers of soldiers, infinite time and an infinite budget, it would certainly work. However, Krauthammer has finite numbers of soldiers, finite money, finite time. So, within the limits of what is actually possible, could it work?

I was being generous to say it might be possible, depending on the actual resources. Realistically, its probably not viable, unless you want to put everything you've got into it. Even then... maybe not. But realistically, the obvious thing is that its going to be hideously expensive, long and bloody.

By the way, Charles Krauthammer is not a military theoretician, and so far as I know, has never served or been in combat. I could be wrong on this, but that's my understanding. What he is is an ideologue, a vicious delusional old hack eager to have other people die for his principles, and lacking a lick of common sense.

As for the trapped civilians most of them would not have fought - they were civilians, remember? Expulsion? Well, what do you think would happen if Israel were destroyed?

Ghandi et al.... As I said you don't know or understand history. No possible way can these guys be considered successful, and whatever partial victories their ideas have gained have been spread over CENTURIES OF EFFORT.

Centuries of effort, yes. In some cases, only decades of effort in the case of Ghandi. Years in the case of King.

And yes, I consider them successful. Because the bottom line is that we live in a world where might does not make right, where genocide is an abomination, where torture is a crime. We live in a world where the concept of human rights is accepted. Where slavery is abhorrent.

The world we live in is the product of vast numbers of people committed to piecing things together, in quiet opposition to those who would kick it to pieces. No matter how many times Ghengis Khan sacked Babylon, it was rebuilt.

You think that history is the product of wars and strife. You are wrong. Wars and strife are certainly part of it, they're the fireworks of history. But real history is people building things.

You're everything I hate in a human being.

Nothing you have said gives me greater pleasure.

Your argument is that Lebanon's infrastructure was dual use, used by both civilians and by hezbollah.

I dunno. Two objections.

First, the slippery slope of that argument is that ultimately, everything is dual use, and there is no civilian. Everything is fair game. I don't think that this argument is accepted in international law, its all a war crime. I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure you're advocating or justifyin a war crime here.

The second issue is that its false. It appears that Hezbollah had stockpiles of stuff. Israel wasn't stopping missiles coming in, they were already there. Israel wasn't shutting out the lights in Hezbollahs tunnels, they already had their own generators. They weren't fueling their launchers at the corner gas station, that was already in place. Israel wasn't even interfering with troop movements, they were already dug in.

So, what does it come down to... I dunno? Stupidity? Sadism? take your pick.

I think my principle argument was that mind bogglingly stupid military plans will probably produced mind boggling military disasters. On this I'm backed up by history.

Tautology, anyone?

Particularly, my point was that the sort of plan Bradthedad was advocating was not going to work, and was not going to work in spectacularly unpleasant ways.

If you read him as advocating a massive frontal assault on Hizbullah positions you are correct. I didn't...

Krauthammer's master plan seems to call for huge numbers of soldiers in hostile territory, surrounded inside and outside by the enemy, fighting a guerilla war of attrition

...and neither did Krauthammer.

First, it wasn't his plan or Israel Insider's plan. It was the Israel army's preferred plan as told to both of them by unnamed sources. Was that really the army's plan? Was the reporting good? Was the plan good? How should I know? How should anyone know at this stage of the game?

Second, your reasoning is extremely faulty. By all accounts Hizbullah fighters number no more than a few thousand, concentrated (with their extensive fortifications) between the Litani and the border.

Third, more generally. Hitler never would have attempted to bypass the Maginot line if he'd thought like you. History is filled with such examples where daring and imagination triumphs over numbers and tradition.

Centuries of effort, yes. In some cases, only decades of effort in the case of Ghandi. Years in the case of King.

Another example of bad thinking.

Gandhi achieved success against a terminally weakend British empire which - according to you - never had much military force in India anyway. When the real battle was joined Gandhi was immediately assissanted and traditional methods were used.

How important ware King and his methods? How successful would he have been without the American civil war as preamable, without Eisenhower's willingness to use troops in the South?

Because the bottom line is that we live in a world where might does not make right, where genocide is an abomination, where torture is a crime.

What world is that? Where is it? How do you get there?

You think that history is the product of wars and strife. You are wrong. Wars and strife are certainly part of it, they're the fireworks of history. But real history is people building things.

Real history is a record of what happens. ALL of what happens. Building and destruction, hopes and fears, dreams and disappointment. Life and death.

People want things and are willing kill to get them. That's how it always has been, that's how it always will be. Nobody knows the best way to construct a society which minimizes the damage resulting from such a mindset but negating the value of a forceful response is a sure loser.

Are the Phillippines or Vietnam relevant? Not in my book. The French, Spanish, Americans never had the proximity or motivation of the Israelis in Lebanon and Palestine.

You do realize that the Americans won the Phillipine Insurrection? They killed off 10% of the population, but they did win.

In terms of proximity and motivation, one might argue that the Russians had both in Afghanistan. They still lost.

Okay, though, proximity and motivation are fairly strong arguments. In a practical sense, motivation makes a party willing to bear very high costs to achieve their goals. Winning is a lot more important. So you raise the stakes, the folks who aren't willing to pay that price go home.

Proximity is a cost saver. It reduces the costs and expense of your campaign, shortens the supply lines, makes life easier every which way. That's one reason why defense is always easier than offense.

Their survival was never at stake in the wars they fought in those countries.

Israel's survival was never at stake in this particular war. There was no existential threat. There was no chance that Hezbollah would have invaded Lebanon, and if it did, then it would simply be squashed. It fired 4000 short range rockets, and barely hit anything.

Will Hezbollah become an existential threat in the future? Anything's possible, but the odds are against it. Hezbollahs relative wealth and population base is tiny compared to Israel, and its always going to be tiny. There's never going to be a likelihood of a ground invasion by Hezbollah.

At best, Hezbollah might obtain more longer range missiles, capable of striking futher into Israel, more accurately, and more dangerously. Well, that's definitely alarming, but it isn't a threat to survival. Most European countries survived for decades with those sorts of threats hanging over their heads. And in any event, Hezbollah already has those missiles, a few dozen or few hundred anyway...

So the good question is why didn't Hezbollah use them.

Daniel Greenbaum and I have a disagreement there. He thinks that Israel took them all out. I'm a bit skeptical of that.

I think that if Israel had been successful at systematically taking many of them out, Hezbollah would probably have deployed the rest of them on the 'use it or lose it philosophy.'

Instead, they fired enough long range rockets to show that they had them, but stuck to short range.

So what's the strategy there? I'm thinking that the short range missiles were probablyl technically obsolete to Hezbollahs thinking, so they just decided to have a 'fire sale.'

The long range missiles were a strategic reserve, a 'second strike' capability, to be used if and when Israel crosses the line, or when the strategic advantage is greatest.

Nasrullah actually made just that threat "You hit Beirut proper, we'll hit Tel Aviv." Maybe he was bluffing and had no long range missiles left. Or maybe he wasn't. That's brinksmanship for you.

But even if Hezbollah held hundreds or thousands of long range missiles, its still not going to be an existential threat to Israel. Israel's existence is not in danger.

At worst, Hezbollah would do enough damage to provoke a genuinely ferocious Israeli response. The sort of response that makes this war look like a playground spat. Which means that they probably don't want that.

So, they want to threaten, but they don't want to actually go full fledged. Hey, that's international politics the world over. It's ugly, but people manage to live with it.

You use those examples and reject mine for no reason other than political bias.

'No reason other than political bias'? So Zulus with spears charging gattling guns over open Savannah; Indian braves dying of smallpox en masse; and Sikh mercenaries massacring Punjabis are all the same as hezbollah guerillas fighting an Israeli incursion?

Well, if you can't appreciate the differences at this point, I don't think I'll keep on beating that dead horse.

But how was such a small population, decimated by the shock of the Holocaust able to do that against a much larger population which was, according to you, more or less its equal in culture, wealth, technology?

Well, the populations in Palestine between Arabs and Jews were more or less in the same ballpark, so it wasn't a tiny minority. A minority in the larger regional population, but not in the particular area.

Second, this wasn't necessarily a group of holocaust survivors. The Jewish settler community in the Palestine area was substantial in the 20's and 30's, and certainly through the 30's, there were numerous League of Nations partition plans aimed at trying to resolve the issue.

As to how they did it? Well, initial support from the British. Possibly substantial international support in terms of funding and weapons that allowed them to outgun their local rivals. More ruthlessness. A greater strategic vision, more unity, more organization. It's not a bad question, and in academic terms, it would actually be an interesting area for dispassionate discussion.

That's an after the fact judgement. The Europeans were numerically and technologically equal or superior to the Nazis at the outset of WWII but were defeated in a matter of weeks. Noone predicted that. Israel has had sufficient advantage for 50 years...against all odds.

You're kidding? Europe was not a collective state with a united army and command structure. It was a polyglot collection of independent states, all of which (except for the USSR) had smaller territories, populations and economies than Germany.

Poland was about a third Germany's population, a tenth its economy, and was running around with an army of 19th century horse cavalry, they were easy pickings.

Denmark, Norway, Belgium and Holland were countries of only a few million apiece, each vastly smaller than Germany with barely a military, and certainly their military components were not nearly as technically or organizationally sophisticated.

France was the tough nut. The French were a whole 2/3 the population of Germany, and their economy was about half the size of Germany's. So instead of Goliath versus the midgets, it was Goliath versus the lightweight. The French tanks were actually pretty good, and french tech and german tech tended to play leapfrog with each other, one ahead then the other ahead.

When the war initially broke out, Poland fell quickly. But on the eastern front between Germany and France, nothing happened for about a year. It was so quiet it was called the phony war. The French strategic command relied on static emplacements and the maginot line.

Then the Germans broke through by updating the Schiefen (sic) plan. The French military was completely outflanked, and the french generals were outfoxed. Only DeGaulle was able to mount a successful counterattack, but he was an unpopular 'new wave' strategic thinker and sort of an outcast. Had there been a dozen more like him, things might have been interesting.

DeGaulle, by the way, predicted what might happen. A lot of generals and thinkers did.

What else? Yugoslavia and Greece, two more small countries, trapped between Germany and Italy. Spain? Hungary? Bulgaria? Allied to Germany from the start.

The USSR when Hitler attacked was a huge state in terms of population and territory, but it was also economically backwards and technologically inferior. It managed to catch up though, and that was it for Germany.

Yes. I mean that army...which was not able to destroy Hizbullah in the time and conditions under which it fought.

Yes. That army. And the moral of the story is, don't go into battle at the wrong time and under the wrong conditions with a bad plan!

There's always another side.

And for the last 50 or 100 years the American Left have taken the position that it was right in its conflicts with America. Not always, of course, but close enough so that hyperbole is justified.

You are surprised?

Hardly. I was just countering your assertion that support for a war always declines as casualties mount. I should have known that you would supply an "on the other hand". Guys like you always seem to have so many hands.

I think they made them Generals, who through judicious study of reality, figured out ways to fight, and then proceeded to win.

I don't think there's a single historical example of such a thing.

What I think you were suggesting is that Hezbollah went out and executed all their defeatist liberals so that they could fight without defeatist nagging in the ranks undercutting the will to win.

That is what they did.

And I think you're suggesting that maybe we should execute all the defeatist liberals like me, so that guys like BradtheDad and Charley Krauthammer could go out and win the war...

I wish I could say no. So far America has avoided such behavior...and been the better for it. But avoidance has not been total; the greater the threat the greater the temptation and the smaller the opposition to it. Who can say what this new world will bring. It has already brought us a doctrine of preventative war and legal torture.

I don't have any sense that you are a bad person. I honestly don't. You seem passionate and a bit naive, but neither of these things are sins. I've made you angry by saying things that really go against your grain.

I have the handle "self-interest", argue for machiavellian positions and policies and the use of force on a site which is almost entirely opposed to this, and you think your arguments have made me angry and that I'm a bit naive? Incredible.

I do this partly because I think it's the best way to achieve understanding, partly because I take my positions seriously, and the future of my country seriously, and the future of my people seriously.

This may surprise you but I haven't given you a second thought. I care only about the positions you argue and respond to them as I think best.

Did you even bother to read the article I linked to?

No. I figured you were an idiot.

But your criticism is a fair one so I cut and pasted your link. It didn't work. But by going to the Archives I was able to access and read the article...and one that followed it by Dr. Joel Fishman.

My conclusion? You are an idiot.

And I think you're suggesting that maybe we should execute all the defeatist liberals like me, so that guys like BradtheDad and Charley Krauthammer could go out and win the war...

I wish I could say no.

Uh huh.

Well, lets all just consider that little bon mot, shall we?

You said something really icky, and were confronted with it. You had every chance to explain that wasn't what you meant, to argue that you were being misconstrued, or to simply withdraw the comment or retreat from it. None of that would have set you in a bad light. People occasionally say stupid things.

But you didn't withdraw or apologize or try to explain it.

You didn't back off an inch.

You've just come right out from behind your little verbal fan dance and endorsed the murder of myself, most of the Americans on this board, and a goodly chunk of the American population.

And in another thread, you rave about Hitler's boldness and creativity and daring.

And you go on about might makes right and force being the natural order of things.

Have you read your words? Do you have any appreciation for what you have said? Apparently, I guess you do.

For all your claims to reasoned discourse, you've been dishonest, evasive and abusive from start to finish. You've been prone to sweeping and illiterate generalizations.

You've gone out of your way to heap personal abuse and invective on not just me, but several other people on this and other threads. And you've been quite free to lump us all into a heap that you freely demonize and fantasize about exterminating.

Your posts are uniformly ignorant, vicious and petty.

And you don't even have a sense of humour.

You really are an American Nazi, aren't you? There are no other words to describe you.

Go figure.

How about that.

So far America has avoided such behavior (mass execution of liberals) ...and been the better for it. But avoidance has not been total; the greater the threat the greater the temptation and the smaller the opposition to it. Who can say what this new world will bring...

Don't masturbate while typing. It's icky.

You've persuaded me to reconsider. I said I didn't think you were a bad person.

I was wrong.

You also win the contest by the way.

Where do you get your "history"? Most of it is completely wrong. But you did get one part right. The Germans were daring, imaginative, determined, vicious...

Germany was the largest, most populous, most technologically advanced country in Europe. It's spectacular military successes were based on attacking countries which were smaller and weaker than it was.
That's really all there is to it.

No daring, no imagination, no determination. For all the Nazi's talk of "will" it all amounted to windy hubris and petty spite.

The Holocaust was a logical, perhaps inevitable extension of that. It was more of same, a nation devoted to paranoia, self pity and bullying, at psychotically attacking all those it perceived as weaker than itself, would sooner or later turn on those it perceived as weak and foreign within itself.

There was nothing creative or daring, imaginative or determined about the holocaust either. It was just more of same.

Not a surprise that you're a big fan, though.

Now, please masturbate somewhere else.

Sorry, nothing appears for that link.

Nobody claimed that Hitler was responsible for all the daring and imagination of Nazi Germany. I only claimed that daring and imagination were responsible for many of its victories. Hitler explicitly and repeatedly valued those qualities. Do you wish to dispute that?

It would, perhaps, be more historically accurate to say that "Providence" -- Hitler's word, translated -- put him in the position as Leader such that he could recognize and reward such daring and imagination, as long as he thought it was his idea. Grofaz, remember?

Remember that Hitler would stop a General Staff meeting to argue about the inventory and placement of medium antitank guns. Certain officers appealed to him personally, such as Guderian, who was one of the few that would scream back at Hitler. Manstein, the architect of the Ardennes offensive in 1940, was banished by OKH to command a reserve infantry corps -- he didn't have enough of Hitler's patronage. He always liked Skorzeny, who exemplified daring, although who was fairly nonpolitical.

Student, who was key to Eben Emael, was as daring a man as one could ask, but he was notorious for being the...slowest...talker...in...the...Wehrmacht. This did not please Hitler.

Do I wish to dispute? Are you challenging in some way, or asking for actual information?

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

The link worked for both of my browsers. I don't know why this is so problematic.

However, let's try another tack. Try the home page;

http://israelbehindthenews.com/

and scroll down to:

* HIZBULLAH FIRE PARALYZED ISRAELI UNITS: Anatomy of the battle with Hizbullah by Middle East News Line

Found it, thank you.

I'm afraid that you read the wrong MENL article

No. I read the right article, but mistakenly noted the position of Fishman's piece. I suggest you read that together with Ari Shavit's Ha'aretz article which I liked earlier.

lally - excellent view of ground level military.

Brave new world -- commission a poll from the battlefield about the battlefield:

[Israeli] reservists found themselves on a Lebanese battlefield, at a disadvantage to Hizbullah guerrillas fighting on home turf. And in the midst of combat, they did what anyone wanting to influence decisionmakers here would do: get on their cellphones and commission an opinion poll.

..."We realize that we have to do something because it's a life-or-death situation, and so many soldiers were getting killed. We got upset, but we didn't know what to do," says Intelligence Corps Officer Shmuel Yannay, who has emerged as a kind of spokesman for the reservists...  who contacted the Dahaf Institute a week ago and commissioned the poll on the direction of the war. "It's the first time ever it's been done, and I think it's a new tool," he says. "It's not refusal of orders or officers.

I'm not defending Hitler. I'm emphasizing the role of daring and imagination in military combat. I chose Nazi Germany as an example because it was so much a part of my youth, of the literature and movies of my time. I could just as well have chosen Patton, or the young Napoleon, or Cortez, or Wellington, or Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great, or Kearney and Polk, or Andrew Jackson, or Ulysses Grant, or Genghiz Khan, or the early Muslim conquerors, or many, many others.

I don't know what you're doing.

It's a natural process that information channels tend to become less accessible over time. I've watched it happen with organizations. It takes genuine effort and committed personalities to keep it open.

Already read 'em both. I consume Israeli news reports every day from all sorts of sources and have been doing so for 5+ years.. Sometimes the far rightwing ones provide the best information as Haaretz, other Israeli MSM-types and even unaffiliated journos working in Israel have to abide by Israeli miliitary censorship rules.

The value of the MENL article is in the level of detail unavailable from other sources. I suspect that the settler "host" site is either overlooked or because they reprint articles, they don't have to submit original reporting to the censors. Sometimes one can even get lucky and find English translations of Hebrew articles.

They also used these weapons in a "double tap" mode to punch a hole in a protected spot for Israeli infantry, and then sent another missile, with blast-fragmentation rather than armor-penetrating warhead where possible, into the hole.

I had imagined that Hezbolla were using some form of shoulder fired anti- armor weapon, likely someone's more modern version of a LAW. I went to google. The AT-4 seems to be the U.S. modern version of the LAW. It can penetrate 14 inches of armor. I can’t imagine that any weapon which punches through one side of an armored vehicle with a shaped charge would not put that vehicle out of commission and would not kill or maim everyone inside. In fact, according to the sight I read, “After-armor effects (spalling). The projectile fragments and incendiary effects produce blinding light and destroy the interior of the target.”

I really can’t imagine how to hit that same hole with a second shot even if it was necessary.

Next I googled Tow and NLOS. These are big weapons, as you said. The current TOW’s are said to be capable of penetrating more than 30 inches of armor at a range of better than 3000 meters. Are you suggesting that it takes a second one of these penetrating a hole made by the first one in order to knock out an armored vehicle or tank and that the second one could, in fact, hit that hole? It's a big jump from hitting a target to hitting the bullseye.

It may have been confusing that I was talking about different tactics against Israeli armor and Israeli infantry.

I can’t imagine that any weapon which punches through one side of an armored vehicle with a shaped charge would not put that vehicle out of commission and would not kill or maim everyone inside. In fact, according to the sight I read, “After-armor effects (spalling). The projectile fragments and incendiary effects produce blinding light and destroy the interior of the target.”

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

And why did that great majority of Palestinians not bake their bread and make their garden grow in Gaza rather than launching rockets into Israel

They did.

Some number of Palestinians -maybe 100 , maybe 1000 launched rockets into Isreal. . A minority. That left the great majority of Palestinians who did indeed go about leading a normal life. Do you really disagree ?

It requires no special knowledge of  human nature  for it to be intuitively obvious that the majority of Andorans , Belgians , , Chinese , Darfurians, Ethiopians.....and on to Zambians mostly want to bake their bread and make their gardens grow. Why shouldn't that also be the case with Palestinians ? Prick a Palestinian ,doth he not bleed ?

A few isolated individuals do not a peace movement make

A reasonable argument. I maintain the glass is half full . You're entitled to maintain it's half empty.

 Too many Palestinians want only the destruction of Israel

Yes. 

 and are unwilling to accept a two state solution. That is why Arafat walked away from a deal

I haven't a clue exactly why Arafat walked away from Taba. I wish he hadn't.