Israel vs Hezbollah...who won?

Great Debates
141

xtisme: Lessee. This here is GD. You ask for folks’ opinions on who won. I posted two opinion pieces which were meant to show that, IMO,

a) the military campaign was decidedly counterproductive, and
b) the proposition that the Israeli conventional army could steamroller Hizbullah’s guerrillas was laughable, and so poked fun at them for even trying.

Which I said before, and guess what? I was right, you were wrong. Sorry.

Finn Again:

Excluded middle, again. “Getting” Hizbullah didn’t mean immediately attacking all of Lebanon, with the only other option being sitting around doing nothing. The world is not that simple.
The cards Israel had on July 12 were: the majority of Lebs were hostile to what Hizbullah had just done. They had, a little more than a year ago, thrown out Hizbullah’s masters, the Syrians, by force of sheer popular will. Syria was diplomatically isolated even from other Arab countries, and Iran was both feared and resented. Actually, still is.
The alliance of the US and France was a natural in this situation, since the US stands behind Israel, and France has in the past shown itself willing to protect the francophone Leb Christian population when push came to shove.
So, “getting” Hizbullah could have included military action, but should also have included, as Bush did with Afghanistan (which, as I recall, you dismissed with “but Lebanon’s not Afghanistan”, which I suppose is true, if, shall we say, uninformative) a bit of an interval to give Hizbullah time to respond to the combined weight of international opinion, domestic opinion, and massed Israeli troops at the border, with the occasional bombardment as circumstances warranted of targets in southern Lebanon and, possibly, Nasrallah’s HQ up in southern Beirut. Even more importantly, from the POV of US interests, which, being as I’m an American, is what I’m most interested in, it would have allowed the UN to continue to put the kind of slowly-building pressure that was being placed on Iran and its nuclear program. Of course, this pressure was also very much in Israel’s interest. As I said before, Hizbullah is a far worse threat than the PLO because it has Iran behind it.
So, by the time it would have come down to using total military force against them, it would have been manifestly clear that it came down on them because of their (Hizbullah’s, to be clear) intransingence and unprovoked belligerence, and it also would have been crystal clear that this belligerence was in service not to Lebanon, but to Iran. So, Iran would have gained no advantage, and Syria would have gained no advantage.
There were all kinds of possibilities from here, including a second domestic mass movement like the one that threw out Syria, this time against Hizbullah.
This is what I meant by “getting” Hizbullah, a thing which I know I said before, because I even remember your answers from before.
Would it have worked? Who the hell knows?
We do know that Israel had a snowball’s chance in Hell of defeating Hizbullah by military means alone. All they accomplished by trying it again was to prove it, again. This was as clear on July 12 as it was on July 23 when the War Nerd wrote that column, and as it is today.
At this point, I really don’t care what happens anymore. If Israel’s leaders are too stupid to see any of this (that the people are reacting as Alessan says they are is hardly surprising, and perfectly normal; of course the same process is happening on the Lebanese side), there’s no point in wasting my time caring what happens in the eternal Israeli/Arab conflict anymore. Caring would imply that some side or other was worth worrying about, but if both sides are limitlessly brutal, and one of them is also unbelievably stupid, (actually two of them, if you include the Palestinians) it’s just a waste. It’s like trying to figure out whether the Russians or the Chechens are in the right, a thing I didn’t care about a decade ago, I don’t care about now, and I won’t care about a decade from now.
Same thing here. Of course I’ll hear a lot more about it, and some portion of my tax money is going into it, but so what. Lots more of my tax money is wasted on other stupid stuff. And I hear a lot about that lady (can’t remember her name) who’s going to do the CBS Evening News, but I ignore that.
I’ll be ignoring this when it comes up in the news too, from here on in. Means nothing, except perhaps as morbid entertainment value. Should it affect oil prices, as it did in 1973, I’ll care about it as an investor and a consumer, but that’s about it. Iran counts for more in that department.
At this point, Syria, an otherwise inconsequential country geopolitics-wise, is of far more importance than Israel, because of its relationship to Iran, the country that really counts as our antagonist in that region, and one that’s been successfully manipulating us since 1979.
As for our Prez, he, as usual, falls into the department of shit you can’t make up: I hear he was surprised that the Shias in Iraq support Hizbullah. That about sums him up. One can only wonder if he or Olmert is the stupider one, and hope that the amount of damage he can cause between now and January 2009 will be limited. It’s a forlorn hope, but whatever.

142

No, you spent all your time stating that you don’t care about anything by Lebanese casualties. You don’t care about circumstance, you don’t care who’s at fault, and you don’t care about context (and you never mentioned Israeli civilian casualties, leading me to believe you don’t care about those either). All you’ve stated you care about is Lebanese casualites, reguardless of anything else. Right? Thought so.

In keeping with your ‘debate’ style, here is my response.

Read it. Here is my refutation. All will be answered in there (somewhere). Hezbollah bad…evil. News at 11.

:rolleyes: You posted ‘two opinion pieces’ (your words) that agree with you, and then declare victory? Ah well…all is clear now. Thanks for your input.

-XT

143

@Pantom
Your two pieces you cited were very interesting - thanks

My reading of the Syrian one confirms what I have suspected over the past few weeks (well one has a tendency to read things the way one wants :slight_smile: )

The Syrians want the Golan Heights back, frankly I’m inclined to bet 10:1 that they will get them back - they are useless as gun platforms, which is why Israel grabbed them, and the local technology of war has cranked up from guns to missiles.

The Syrians are also pissed at being humiliatingly kicked out of Lebanon, where they were doing a sterling job of keeping the lid on the pressure cooker. Somehow I doubt those Katyushas would have started up if Syria were still there.

From an interview I heard with a Syrian minister, I reckon that they have twigged the import of what Israel was prepared to do. Namely wipe out infrastructure and not even think about invasion. This is unpleasant for the S. Lebanese, but for Syria it would be lethal.

The second post, Becher from Russia, was interesting. He reckons that the IDF has gone soft and that they did not have the guts to do the job properly. My opinion, formed from numerous business trips to Israel since 1991, is that the IDF is anything but soft, anyone who has done their military service is regularly recalled for training and exercizes.
The people I’ve seen in high security areas look very tough to me.
I think they used 30,000 troops, which does not scratch their true resources.

Personally I don’t think that Israel had the faintest intention of actually going into S Lebanon, which would have been sheer madness, it looked as if they were trying to cordon the area to prevent Hezbollah escaping - and possibly any more getting in.

Their approach looked pretty rational to me, they were trying to drive out the civilian population (which they largely did) and then let S Lebanon rot. The last thing they could have done without massive casualties, was to conduct a house to house mop up.

That they were stopped just short of the endgame, does not mean that their tactics were faulty - it simply means that they felt it necessary to comply with the UN, for whom they have utter contempt.

It looks as if the UN is having problems rustling up ‘peace keepers’, I thought it would be the French, but had forgotton about the 58 French paratroopers killed in a 1983 suicide attack.

I don’t think that the military action was counterproductive, for a start the Israelis had little alternative, and the result is a warning to anyone else in the area.

As for: ‘the proposition that the Israeli conventional army could steamroller Hizbullah’s guerrillas was laughable’
I totally agree, and don’t believe that was the objective, but they could have starved out (and burnt out) Hezbollah in S. Lebanon, and hoped that their Maronite and Druze friends would clean out the residue in N. Lebanon - which might still happen.

144

No, just your normal song and dance, again. You claim that it is impossible to defeat Hezbollah militarily, but Israel should’ve used various means to try to defeat Hezbollah militarily. When faced with the obvious baiting and dishonest debate you’ve engaged in, you try to accuse me of commiting the fallacy of the excluded middle. Good try, but no.

Although it is certainly highly amusing that you are presenting Israel trying to ignite a civil war as something that would’ve been better than bombing some roads.

It’s also quite funny that that your ‘proof’ for this contention is some online blog type thing by some fool calling himself the War Nerd, who says things like

Yes, that’s why my ancestors fought for their lives, to “show up the book-nerd steroetype”. I’m glad you’ve posted such a very intelligent and well researched analysis of the situation.

Or how about some racism from your War Nerd?

Ahhh, they could’ve beaten those “Arab” chickenshits. Good good.
But at least he likes Hezbollah.

Ahhh, good. Russians, Yemenese, etc… are “weak” because they had a granfather who “liked carp” or a grandmother with the “overprotective gene”, which of course were factors that’d make them “look Jewish.”

As for that ignorant bigot, is he insulting anybody from the Schalit family, or just those who trasliterated it without the ‘c’? :rolleyes: Glad that you’ve backed up your views so thoroughly. He knows that Gilad Shalit is a “weak freeloader”… how?

Cute.
Shouldn’t surprise me that you’d post some cite like that though.

“Mighty sloppy of that paper tiger, the American Military, to get attacked by a suicide bomber in 1983, right while those 241 poor baby marines were getting ready to not be dead. This is obviously because all those Wasps didn’t outbreed those dirty, cowardly people like the Irish who totally ruined the American military.”

So your bigot War Nerd says that Hezbollah couldn’t be expelled, because they’re a genuine mass movement. Your answer, as something that would be better for all of Lebanon, is a civil war. Presumably one with tens (or hundreds) of thousands of deaths in order to totally eliminate this “genuine mass movement.”

Glad you provided such a worthy cite there.

Ah, more of your standard song and dance.

First, while running away from a debate, you say that you were opposed to Irsael not “going after” Hezbollah alone while leaving the rest of the country out of it. Now you say that really meant that the way to leave the rest of the country out of it was civil war. Kay.

Then you go on to, again, present the argument “But it worked in a totally different country with totally different people, totally different dynamics, totally different history, and totally different regional actors. And pointing those facts out, which show my analogy is totally worhtless, is, shall we say, uninformative.”

Your attempt to shift the burden of proof won’t fly, I’m afraid. The claim that was both uninformative, and uninformed, was yours. Pointing out that you had no basis for your analogy is all I’m obligated to do. Thanks for playing.

Yeah… the UN could’ve applied ‘slowly building’ pressure for a few years. The same UN which even now won’t actually disarm Hezbollah. And in the meantime the IDF could just mobalize, and then sit on the border, for years, while the UN ‘slowly built’ impotent pressure. That certainly would’ve stopped Hezbollah from attacking Israel, or caused it to disarm.

Why does it surprise me that you are yet again holding forth on military matters? If I recall correctly, the last time was when you were pretending to have any idea, at all, how targeting from an attack 'copter went, and how you could easily see the color of someone’s helmet through whatever battlefield conditions one faced, at whatever distance and altitude, through a gunner’s view.

I suppose I should again defer to you and your vast gunship gunnery experience, right? Besides the fact that you were totally unaware that displays for a gun cam are in black and white? How easy is it to pick out a blue helmet on a black and white image? Pantom tells us that it’s impossible not to.

Trust pantom on military matters.

Civil war, a better option than bombing roads and then getting the UN to provide a buffer. So says pantom, able to see color on a black and white feed.

No, “we” do not know that. You, who knows all about firing on targets from an attack 'coptor, “knows” that. If Irsael had used a massive ground invasion, things might’ve been different. Or if the world didn’t attempt to hamstring any Israeli actions.

But hey, obviously the people who say you can’t take out logistical supply routes, and that it’d be better to help start a civil war? They really had the civilians’ best interests at heart.

:rolleyes:
Then you’ll stop posting before you make yet another 920 word post in which you talk about how little you care about the issue you’re posting on?

“I just had to tell you that I’m not going to be telling you things.”

Glad you’re trying to get the last word in and, yet again, running away after that.
The last time it was that Israel should just “go after” Hezbollah in order to spare the rest of the country. You evidently now claim that what you really meant was that Israel should’ve spared the rest of the country by getting the rest of the country to engage in an ethnic civil war. And that causing damage to all of Lebanon, as a civil war certainly wouldn’t do, was “depraved shit.”

Yet again, bye bye.

145

Hezbollah won - mostly because Israel underestimated it’s them

The Israeli haven’t fought any real enemies lately. Harassing and murdering old women and children on the West bank doesn’t make israeli soldiers better prepared for the real McCoy

146

I do not agree that the Israelis underestimated the outcome of a scrap with well embedded guerillas.

Technologically and empirically Israel turned S. Lebanaon into a toilet.

Unfortunately just right now, the Israelis have suffered a massive loss of compassion.

They think that their government is a bunch of limp wristed cretins

  • my guess is that they are close to opening Dimona

To some extent this is a replay of Nixon and the USSR, when Ehrlichman advocated the ‘madman theory’

  • except the USA would just love Israel to take out Iran
    (I would not, but it looks like the next move in the chess game to me)

Actually my prediction was a nuclear accident in Iran, when they got close to a domestic offensive weapon.

The West Bank is profoundly irrelevant, three weeks without water and they will be … truly grateful to Hamas.

147

Well, I heard an analyst say that Israel had only fought against weak enemies in recent years, and that this have made them porer soldiers

Many have stated that IDF is not what it once was.

They did also underestimate the enemy by labeling them as terrorist and not soldiers.

148

Since the subject has come up, a story I found mentioned on another website : IDF is Hollow

149

Maybe you didn’t realize this, but the US military only fought ‘weak enemies’ between Vietnam and the first Gulf War. Were you under the impression that this made the US poorer soldiers? Perhaps you felt that army we took into Kuait was substandard compared to the glorious Arabic horde?

So, had they labled them terrorists then they would have been better prepared? I sense that there is some revisionism going on even as we speak. From phantom’s amusing War Nerd to this.

Did I miss the huge IDF defeat on the battlefield?? phantom’s, er, cite, claims that the IDF was afraid to engage Hezbollah, who were just waiting there, ready and eager to fight. This doesn’t seem to be how I remember things happening though. Did I miss Hezbollah standing up to the IDF in the field and throwing them back? Where was this great defeat? The fact that Israel and the IDF didn’t have anything resembling a solid strategy, didn’t have firm strategic goals and didn’t have a clear idea on how to achieve what they really wanted (i.e. Hezbollah out of Southern Lebanon as a para-military force) doesn’t mean that Hezbollah ACTUALLY defeated Israel on the battle field. Thats just Hezbollah (and Syrian) propaganda. Show me where THEY (and not international pressure) stopped the IDF cold and threw them out of Southern Lebanon. Show me where they went head to head with the IDF in a major battle and defeated them.

IIRC Israeli casualties were something like 200 (from memory)…not exactly a resounding indication of the fierce Hezbollah super soldiers throwing Israel back in disarray. For over a months fighting in fixed and improved fortifications (some of which have been building in Southern Lebanon since the Israeli’s left in 2000), in urban settings (the absolute WORST place for conventional troops to attempt to engage such forces), as well as having the advantage of fighting mixed with a civilian population that supports it, AND blending in with that population, I wouldn’t characterize some 200 IDF casualties as being excessive…not even close in fact. The US military has had months of over 200 casualties in Iraq after all…and the Iraqi insurgents don’t have near the advantages that Hezbollah has in terms of resources, time to create fixed and improved fortifications, mine fields, fields of fire, etc, nor do they have the open support of places like Syria, sophisticated (well, sort of) weapons like artillary and rockets, etc etc.

Lets keep it real here. The IDF wasn’t defeated on the battlefield by a superior Hezbollah military machine. They were defeated by themselves and their poor planning, and they were defeated on the international level by being increasingly pressured to do a ceasefire. A ceasefire that Hezbollah, Lebanon and Syria were screaming for and are pissed off at the US for not having driven down Israel’s throat earlier. Which brings up my final point…normally when you are kicking someone’s ass on the battlefield you don’t scream for a ceasefire. I note who was shrieking for said ceasefire and who was reluctant…and draw certain conclusions from that.

-XT

150

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/18/world/main1913525.shtml Not everyone sees great planning and combat readiness.
They flew 9000 missions and lost Zero airplanes. This was target practice with human being tossed in.Weaker enemy absolutely.

151

Its a good point (though realize that to an extent the murky internal workings of Israeli politics is also a factor in that piece). Slashing the IDF’s budget was probably not the wisest thing every done (especially in THEIR situation). I think the IDF is a bit less ‘hollow’ than is being implied there (I recall similar things being said about the US military when IT was talking about its budget), but I conceed that the IDF probably wasn’t optimally prepared for its adventure into Lebanon. Doesn’t mean it collapsed like a crushed beer can though as some seem to be implying. For all the fact it was ‘hollow’, and given the nebulous nature of what it was tasked to do, I’d say it did a pretty fair job in Southern Lebanon, all things considered.

-XT

152

you of course in the interest of fair debate offer stories that disagree with you and claim victory. Not logical. I offer other opinions hoping to shake your absolute certainty. You reject any and all counter info as opinion. unproven and writer not to be trusted. Your opinions are gospel.This is clear.
The Israeli government is lying, The US government is lying, the Lebonese and Irani governments can not be trusted.
This war was never about a couple soldiers and I wonder how much it is connected to a neocon like regime change plan. We argue nits while the big story was most likely about Iran all along and whether a shock and awe attack would be fruitfull. Hopefully the idea will be rejected. The simple wars the powerful see do not exist.Overwhelming military power is not able to take a country over and change it’s policies. I would suggest negotiations as offering the only spark of hope possible.

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Former Generals: Bush Must Negotiate to Make America Safer - Antiwar.com Original I am not alone.

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Hamas, in wildfire’s reality.
Islamic Jihad, in wildfire’s reality.

Not real terrorists, nopers. Old women and children. :rolleyes:

Actually, the problem wasn’t that Hezbollah was merely a terrorist organization, but that from all reports, they were essentially an army. They had ordinance, APC’s, bunkers, anti-tank missiles and mines, etc…

And the world objected even to Israel’s greatly restrained campaign, hamstringing them from the word go. Israel lost, because the world wouldn’t let them fight, let alone win. They also lost, for instance, because there was a strategic disagreement between those advocating a ground invasion and those advocating air power. In addition, it certainly seems that they lacked a cohesive military plan with clear goals and an endgame; most likely because after a very short while the situation became “We have to damage Hezbollah as much as possible before we’re forced into a ceasefire that’ll just allow Hezbollah to rearm.”

Compare the prosecution and world’s reation, for instance, to the bombing campaign in Yugoslavia.

Has there ever been a “proportionate” war, in all of history, ever, anywhere?
No?
Odd… that.

155

Have I claimed victory? Would you like to perhaps provide a cite of me declaring victory? How about a cite of me claiming my opinions are gospel? Or are you making that stuff up? I await your show of good faith in proving me saying that stuff…

Not true. At a guess, you don’t even KNOW what my opinions are on any of this stuff…its evident in your, er, posts. Had you bothered to read the Pit thread I did on you, you would have realized just what my problem with you is. It has nothing to do with you having a contrary opinion to my own. I’m not going to go into it again with you, as you are obviously incapable of understanding the point.

Yes? And?

As I said above, its obvious you haven’t actually bothered to READ anything I’ve written. Where did I ever claim this was all about the two soldiers captured (and the 3 killed which you have obviously forgotten about)? Could you cite that along with me declaring victory or claiming my opinions are gospel? Thanks in advance.

-XT

156

:smack: Case in point. I’m not even going to bother opening this, since you insist on continueing this cryptic drive by crap. WTF does ‘I am not alone’ MEAN? Why can’t you be bothered to quote the relevent parts of your cite and DEBATE the fucking points? Its a mystery that appearently will never be solved.

-XT

157

You’re right not to read it. Evidently, gonzo seems to have not even read the link.

It is, like most of his drivebys, an opinion piece. He could’ve written similar ideas himself, or cited what he agreed with, or actually worked to craft an argument… but we get google vomit.

The article says nothing, not one word, about Lebanon, Israel, or Hezbollah. It says nothing about the topic of this thread. It does focus on Iran, and, presumably, gonzo’s point that “he is not alone” is that he’s not alone in believing that negotiation is a viable path. But bandwaggon fallacies aside (unless his “I am not alone” was pure filler and meant absolutely nothing, and he was instead citing the authors of the article as experts), I find the reliance on negotiaton uber alles rather amusing.

What, exactly, did that achieve with North Korea’s neuclear ambitions?

Whee.

158

With due respect, this is just as silly as claiming that the US lost in Vietnam because the anti-war protestors made the army fight with one hand tied behind its back. If you have any evidence that “the world” had any impact whatsoever of the IDF’s actions prior to the ceasefire, I should be rather interested in seeing it. Yes, there was plenty of diplomatic language tossed about that was critical of Israel’s behaviour, but in what sense did it actually change it? Are you saying that the IDF was holding back against Hezbollah? I don’t believe it. What else could you mean? That in the absence of global pressure, Israel would have taken less care in avoiding civilian casualties? I doubt that’s the case, and in any event taking less care would have hurt their cause, not furthered it.

At most “the world” cause the ceasefire to be declared earlier than it would have been otherwise.

159

Not at all. The Vietnam protesters weren’t on the UNSC.

I’m leaving to visit my folks in Vermont, so I can’t track down any cites. You already touched on the fact that Israel had to limit its actions prior to the ceasfire in anticipation of the ceasfire. You’ve answered part of your own question.

Or look at Israel’s attempt to limit civilian casualties, and the propaganda battle that was being fought, with global news largely either ignorantly or knowingly aiding Hezbollah with staged photos and the like. Obviously Israel cared not only about civilian casualties, but in the world’s reaction to it.

Boycotts aren’t unknown.

Of course they were holding back. Do you honestly think that this was the full fury of the IDF’s military capabilities? They could have attacked Syria as well for its role in supplying Hezbollah, or Iran as well for that matter.

They wouldn’t have had to limit their timetable to when the world was likely to impose a ceasefire. And in standard operations the IDF balances civilian casualties vs their objectives. You don’t think they used a much more restrictive calculus in this context?

That’s a huge difference, including but not limited to causing Israel to abandon certain long term objectives or patterns of deployment.

160

With due respect (and you should know by now that I DO highly respect you as a poster :)), I disagree and think thats a poor analogy. First off, correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t recall the US being blasted by The World™ (a.k.a. Europe and friends) less than a month after our involvement in Vietnam (unless we count the USSR or China I suppose). I don’t recall the French being blasted for THEIR earlier adventure there either, despite doing some rather horrendous things. IIRC it wasn’t until the mid to late 60’s that The World™ started hammering on the US for Vietnam…ironic since we didn’t exactly go into Vietnam unilaterally. Anyway, pushing on…secondly, the US wasn’t directly attacked, we were responding to an attack by North Vietnam and its proxies on South Vietnam. This is vastly different than the situation Israel was under, as ITS citizens WERE initially attacked.

I certainly think its clear that in the case of Israel, international pressure for a ceasefire WAS clearly a factor in bringing the conflict to a halt…which was Finn’s point. I don’t see how you could make a case otherwise to be honest. Again, maybe I missed it, but I don’t recall a devastating defeat of the IDF on the battlefield…which would have been the only OTHER reason for Israel to agree to a ceasefire so rapidly. Maybe the IDF IS ‘hollow’ these days…but I do believe they can sustain 200 odd casualties without completely folding.

-XT