Israel vs Hezbollah...who won?

Great Debates
161

I really hate line by line debates because they rapidly become impossible to follow, as each nitpicky response degenerates into its own tangential and irrelevant argument, so I hope you’ll forgive me for not emulating your writing style and replying en bloc.

In sum, you appear to be saying that the IDF would have used more firepower and for longer absent global disapproval. Or, in other words, that if they hadn’t had to fight with one arm tied behind their back, they could have beaten Hezbollah. Which is exactly what various people in denial say about the US in Vietnam, even if college-aged anti-war demonstrators aren’t the same thing as the UNSC. Of course they aren’t. I never said they were. But the effects are purportedly similar, i.e., they force the good guys to fight in a restrained manner which causes the bad guys to win when they otherwise wouldn’t have. And that is what I’m calling bullshit on. The source of the political pressure is irrelevant.

No, southern Lebanon did not feel the full fury of the IDF, which I do believe would include nuclear weapons. Is that what you’re advocating should have been used? I presume not. What, precisely, could the IDF have done that they did not, restrained as they were by “the world”? For what X did battlefield commanders said “jeez I sure wish we could do X, but the world won’t let us do that”? Carpet-bombing entire villages? Heavier troop concentrations? WHAT? It seems to me that the IDF did precisely as it pleased for the entire length of the campaign. Sure it had more (and less discriminate) firepower in reserve that it did not deploy, but why didn’t it? Because that greater (and less discriminate) firepower was tactically useless (I would argue worse than useless, actually). You again bring up Israel’s care in avoiding civilian casualties. Are you saying that they shouldn’t have taken that care? Certainly “the world” was pressing them on this point, but would you not agree that avoiding civilian casualties was in their own best interest? Or do you think that Israel would have been best served by attempting to depopulate southern Lebanon in wholesale fashion? Again, I presume not. More civilian casualties just result in more young men with dead family members to provide Hezbollah with eager recruits. Unless you mean they should have tried to kill them all. There’s a name for that sort of behaviour. Again, I presume that’s not what you’re advocating.

So please, by all means, explain to me what magical extra force you think the IDF could have deployed that would have helped it in defeating Hezbollah, if only “the world” had let them deploy it.

The only respect in which “the world” had any impact on the campaign was in its length, and for that impact Israel should really be grateful, as each successive day that Hezbollah fought back brought them more glory and more popularity and more support from the entire Arab world. And if you really think that a few more weeks or months would have seen them defeated, then you really are as delusional as the people who thought that the US could have won in Vietnam if only it hadn’t held back.

162

As I’ve just explained, I didn’t mean for the analogy to hold beyond the “coulda won if we hadn’t been restrained” attitude. Otherwise the situations are, as you note, substantially different - except of course that in both cases we have conventional armies fighting popular movements with grassroots support using guerilla tactics. And of course the IDF wasn’t defeated per se, any more than the US Army was defeated in Vietnam. It was just prevented from winning. Granted the campaign has been cut short, but do you really think more time would have changed the outcome? Guerillas never win by outright defeating their opponents. They win by not losing. They win because a popular movement can’t be defeated so long as it has popular support. To beat it, you have to either make it unpopular, or kill off all its support. Since Hezbollah has become more popular rather than less, I submit that Israel should thank the global community for preventing it from shooting itself in the foot for any longer.

163

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/9000 air raids is no way to respect civilian life. Dropping tons of bombs many in populated areas in not preventing casualties nor is saying so. Even repeating it doesn’t make it so. We c;aimed the same when we went into Iraq. See how nice we can aim them. see how they only hit seleced buildings. Nope. I dont. Blocks ofapartment buildings leveled ,residential neighborhoods destroyed. They just got in the way. If they cared about civilian deaths they wouldn’t bomb cities and towns. It was seen as a cost they were willing to bear.
War is ugly and mostly unneccessary. This falls in that category for me. If you think the Israelies needed to bomb the shit out of Lebanon ,say so. But dont expect me to believe it was a humanitarian gesture to make Israel safe and free Lebanon of Hezbollah.
I think neither was accomplished. Israel is made safer in the Lebanon war like America is made safer in Iraq. It 's not.
Whats your def of greatly restrained. Didn’t use nukes. There is a world opinion and it does matter. Israel tried to stay just inside the edge. Many think they miscalculated.

164

Thats why using analogies with Vietnam are so subject to mis-understanding (I actually didn’t get that this was your point)…there is a hell of a lot of baggage associated with that conflict, and different people have different perspectives on both the conflict itself and many of the related events associated with that time.

You asked “but do you really think more time would have changed the outcome?”. Given the very real fact (as I’ve stated elsewhere), that Israel (appearently) had no unified strategy or real goals (except the nebulous 'get Hezbollah out of Southern Lebanon), I’d say that more time PROBABLY wouldn’t have changed the eventual outcome of a ceasefire. I think, even without solid goals or a unified plan however that Israel was hammering Hezbollah, and I DO believe that given more time it would have taken that much longer for Hezbollah to recover.

WRT the point of the Lebanese support of Hezbollah being more or less given that time, all I can say is…I doubt it would have significantly changed, unless in the unlikely event Israel would have achieved its nebulous goal of actually driving Hezbollah from Southern Lebanon perminently. I think this would be HIGHLY unlikely, not because I think such paramilitary or guerilla movements are universally successful (as you seem to be implying above…I might be reading too much there however), nor because the Viet Cong/North Vietnamese army drove the US from the South, etc etc, but because of the lack of planning or unified goals (plus that soul of steel it would require to keep going in the face of international pressure/abuse/condemnation) would have made success all but impossible…at least IMHO.

-XT

165

http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/674/674p15.htm This is a propaganda piece . It is how in much of the middle east this war plays. Patting yourself on the back for restraint plays in Israel and the US. It is not so readily agreed upon in other quarters. I think great damage has been done to Israel and the US. I do not see a safer tomorrow. sorry

166

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Lebanon's devastation sightseers BBC take. It imay not be playing like you wish .

167

The point is not that guerilla movements are universally successful. There are innumerable failed guerilla campaigns littered throughout history. The point is that genuinely popular movements employing guerilla tactics are next to impossible to defeat via brute force. Because they are popular causes, the losses they incur aren’t taken as signs of failure but as signs that support must be even more extensive. Mixed up in the civilian population as they are, increasing the level of force just increases civilian casualties, which lead to just that many more guerilla recruits with personal vendettas. As I said, the way to defeat a popular movement such as this is to make it unpopular (easier said than done of course).

Can you provide a historic example of brute force defeating such a movement? Outside of razing entire cities like the Roman response to the Jewish rebellion, of course. What sort of goals and planning do you envisage that would allow the IDF to conclusively defeat Hezbollah? That is, in some idealized scenario where their hands aren’t tied by global opinion or inadequate leadership, how would that work exactly? What tactics would be used? How would they lead to the demise of Hezbollah as a movement? Explain to me the psychology of how these tactics will lead the southern Lebanese Shia people to complacently admit defeat and give up their resistance.

168

Since Isreal did so poorly out of this venture, I wonder if they are trying to break the ceasefire and ‘get it on’ again.

“Helicopter-borne Israeli commandos landed near the Hezbollah stronghold of Baalbek on Saturday and engaged in a lengthy firefight in what the Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, called a “flagrant violation” of the cease-fire brokered by the United Nations.”

The Foreign Minsitry Spokesman, Mark Regedit, disagrees that it was a violation of the UN resolution, arguing that Israel was preventing arms from being smugged in through Syria - enforcing the arms embargo since no-one else was. Apparently Israel will be releasing evidence of this arms smuggling a bit later on.

169

That is very interesting. It is a bit rough having a go at the poor IDF soldier who was captured though. Fair enough, he does look more like the computer help-desk guy than a soldier, but geez have a look at the pic of the author Gary Brecher.

170

As I said, one such magic extra force is time.

No, not have beaten Hezbollah. I’m talking about realistic goals both in the local and geopolitical realms, and over decades of time. They could have done enough damage and sent enough of a clear message to the supporters of proxy forces to make further negotiations more likely along the way.

If war-via-proxy is no longer profitable, then perhaps peace would be more preferable. If, for instance, states learn that they weren’t free to attack Israel directly or by proxy without a response, perhaps they will decide like Egypt and Jordan that coexistence is better than being cobelligerents

The point is that your analogy is flawed. The difference between the UNSC and disgruntled college age students’ impact on how a war is waged is not a trivial difference. The situations need to be looked at individually.

The devil lies in the details, as always. As a very, very rough and ready analogy, let’s say:

We’ve got two countries, Alpha and Beta. They are fighting each other, doesn’t matter who started it, doesn’t matter over what. There is a third group watching Alpha and Beta, named Gamma.

In one scenario, Gamma can tell Alpha that Alpha should sue for peace. That the goals of the war or the method of its prosecution is wrong, and should stop. Gamma can influence Alpha according to Gamma’s voting power as citizens of the nation of Alpha.

In the second scenario, Gamma can tell Alpha that Alpha should sue for peace. And that if Alpha does not, there may be an embargo, blockade, a set of economic sanctions, or military occupation.

Gamma is obviously not the same organization in scenarios one and two. Treating them as the same in terms of having the ability to alter the course of a war is a false equivalency.

To begin with, they could have made perfectly clear to Iran and Syria what the consequence of continued proxy attacks would be. They could have put boots on the ground and laid siege to towns, forced villagers to evacuate and then sweep towns house by house, etc…

But, that depends on what exactly the goal was. If the goal is the defeat of Hezbollah, we’re talking invasion and bombing on a massive scale. Thousands of civilian deaths. Tanks in the streets, house to house fighting with the familiar accusations of Jenin, with folks like Salam Daher, and the news media that run with that sort of thing, leading the PR charge.

If the goal was to degrade Hezbollah’s capabilities past a certain point, then time is an important factor in grinding Hezbollah down.

I’d wager “Commit the manpower, time, and resources to hurt Hezbollah and their sponsors before the UN steps in.”

Wonder what it could’ve accomplished if allowed to end the war on its own timetable once the entity attacking them was actually stopped from doing it again?

In certain situations? Perhaps, I’m not sure. If there are X rockets in an area with Y people. Should it be hit, or not? I would argue that that decision should be a military one. Are there enough rockets that they are a large enough threat to justify the strike?

These decisions should be made on the basis of absolute military necessity, not world public opinion. Erring on the second side is, indeed, holding back.

In many situations, yes. The decision made should have, again, been military though. For instance, if Israel kept to its current rate of civilian casualties and its current care to avoid civilian casualties, but extended its actions through however long it took to dispose of X rockets, it would have caused more casualties over time.

Minor, that.

Depends if it also responded to those who sent weapons to Hezbollah.

You can destroy a lot of rockets in a few more months.
You can also send a strong message to those backing the proxy force if that act of defense won’t be seen (and legislated on/boycotted) as imperialism.

171

I don’t agree that Israel ‘lost’

I also don’t agree that their strategy or tactics were faulty

They drove out at least 90% of the population, in a series of stages.
They devastated the area
They set up a cordon
The next step was to make it very clear that anyone left had every opportunity to get out.

  • they were stopped there
    The next steps were:
  1. Carpet bomb the area
  2. Incendiary bomb the area
  3. Sit and wait until any remnants of Hezbollah in there died of natural causes

Putting ‘boots on the ground’ would have been insane, why fight with a peashooter when you have a perfectly good grenade launcher ?

Israel never wanted to occupy Lebanon (this time), from bitter experience, they know that it is a mug’s game.

They would not mind having a pop at Iran and Syria’s infrastructure, just enough to drive them back about 500 years.

The stuff about the IDF being ‘hollow’ is what most soldiers complain about, they quite correctly reckon that they can never have enough kit. We in the UK have the same problem, but in our case it is due to incompetence (Chinooks, insufficient body armour, civilians doing military jobs).

True, the Israelis have not had a crack on war since 1973, but they had never had one in 1948. When people feel that they are being invaded, and that the invaders have only one objective, to kill the entire population, then they tend to be pretty determined.

Those Katyushas were regarded (quite correctly) as an invasion.

Israel does not have any real need to keep the ‘ceasefire’, the UN has turned out to be a waste of space.

Interesting that they should go for a Hezbollah stronghold in North Lebanon.

172

WRT the underlined part I have to disagree. The classic examples commonly used for such movements taking on and defeating (or driving out) a world power have one additional element that you have failed to note…that is, they were supplied and financed by an outside agency. Take your Vietnam example. While I take nothing away from the North Vietnamese as far as bravery, resourcefulness and sheer toughness, they could not have done what they did without massive support and aid from Russia and China. Further, going down the food chain to the proxy force, the Viet Cong could not have maintained the fight as long or as hard as THEY did either without support by North Vietnam…who in tern got its support from Russia and China. In Afganistan during the Russian invasion it was the same thing. Again, I take nothing away from the Mujahadeen…like the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese I think they were valiant fighters, tough and resourceful. However, they could not have stood up to the USSR without billions in support and aid from the US. Finally, the other classic example is Spain during the Napolianic wars. This is THE classic example, the place where guerilla comes from in fact (little war). Again, the Spanish were valiant warriors, tough and determined…but they wouldn’t have had a chance either against France without the aid and support of the British.

How about Poland and Hungary during the Soviet occuption? Without outside support both of those popular uprisings were put down…to the point that neither country rebelled again until the collapse of the Soviet Union and its empire. Its early and I’m hung over so perhaps these two examples don’t fit what you meant for historical examples…they are just ones I can think of off the top of my head in my present state.

As for your other question, I don’t think it was a matter of conclusively defeating Hezbollah. THAT was probably not a realistic goal, at least not in the short term. A REALISTIC goal, IMHO, was to hurt them badly, to drive them out of southern lebanon in any kind of strength, to force them to a long and painful rebuliding process, to stretch their logistics…and to send a clear message to the puppet masters in Iran and Syria that things had changed. I believe THESE were achievable goals.

How? Well, first off I’d use the carrot and stick method. I would think that a focused campaign directed at Hezbollah, using both ground assault AND air support would have had the effect of hammering Hezbollah. Next on the political front I would have direct talks with Lebanon stating something to the effect that Israel regrets having to take these steps and hopes Lebanon will take its own steps to insure no recurrance of Hezbollah attacks into Israeli territory, etc etc. Behind the scenes I would be talking to Lebanon about the carrot part, how Israel will be glad to offer either direct help to Lebanon in rebuilding if Lebanon complies in at least attempting to curb Hezbollah, or implying or offering American help both in rebuilding, perhaps trade or other grants, as well as assistance in actually CURBING Hezbollah. As a show of good faith and that Lebanon would be willing to cooperate and be a good future neighbor, I would offer to NOT bomb logistics targets in the North…provided Lebanon actively participated in blocking logistic movements of supplies from Syria/Iran or Northern Lebanon back into the South to resupply and re-enforce Hezbollah.

Behind the scene’s I would be showing the stick to Syria and Iran…stop supplying your proxy forces or the IDF would take (unspecified but dire) steps which could very well escellate into full scale war between Israel and Syria/Iran. I believe that at the least Syria would be forced to take this very seriously.

Couple of last things here. First off, such a plan would take a fundamental shift in Israel and how it looks at things like its own casualties…as well as how it deals, as a society, with the grimmer aspects of modern war fought in such circumstances. Israel, like the US to a lesser extent, is VERY shy these days about taking casualties. Nearly any casualties at all are just about publically acceptable…and the other side knows it. Such a campaign as I’ve give the bare bones of above would preforce cause a certain amount of casualties. The Israeli people would have to be prepared to accept that. If we look at the occupation of Southern Lebanon the last time, something constantly brought up, and look at Israeli casualties for the Decade plus they were there we find…that the ACTUAL casualties were pretty light. IIRC less than 800 IDF soldiers lost their lives (in a decade of fighting). True, much of the IDF was pulled out and it was mainly militia units ACTUALLY in Southern Lebanon for much of that time…but still, thats a lot less casualties than has been inflicted on the US army in our occupation of Iraq thus far (IIRC something like aprox. 3000 dead in 4 years).

The other point I mentioned however is the realization that IF Hezbollah insists on fighting from civilian cover, storing their munitions in civilian areas, etc, then civilians are going to get hurt and killed. Civilians would have been given an opportunity to get out of dodge and flee north…but after that, if they chose to stay then it would be a risk THEY had taken and accepted.
Anyway, hopefully my rambling hung over post answered most of the questions you asked me. If not maybe I can do something a bit more coherent later today or tonight.

-XT

173

Finn Again: yes, it’s my usual song and dance. It amounts to: divide and conquer. Your strategy, and that of Israel, amounts to uniting the enemy against you. Guess which one works? (I’ll give you a hint: Napoleon used the former, until he failed to do it successfully at Waterloo, when his enemies finally succeeded in uniting their forces against him.)
And, you might want to read before you call bigotry. The War Nerd engages in hyperbole to make his point, which, you know, is what you do in an opinion piece. This is not the same thing as bigotry.
The facts are on his side: Israel couldn’t defeat them over the 18 years from 1982 to 2000, and they couldn’t do it this time either. If a quarter century isn’t enough to convince you of the futility of confronting Hizbullah militarily, what exactly would? 50 years? 100 years? How many years and how many casualties and how many destroyed lives and destroyed cities and villages would it take for you to finally decide that the military solution simply isn’t going to work?
The point was just made by xtisme above: Hizbullah is a guerrilla force supplied by an outside power, with deep roots in its native soil, and so is going to be impossible to defeat by conventional means. Like the VC were. Like the Afghan freedom fighters were for the Soviets.
The only hope was to isolate them politically from the rest of Lebanon. That hope is now gone. As is any hope that Israel may have had for peace in any foreseeable future.
Unfortunately, having thought about it, that means the US is going to be dragged in, because of its domestic politics, which are completely distorted by its unconditional backing of Israel, combined with our ridiculous overreliance on oil. Which means that Israel’s interests are now construed as congruent with US interests, even though the latter means we have to somehow keep friendly with the Arabs. Which means I can’t ignore this stuff, because the enormous stupidity of this idiotic campaign is going to cost us, since it will mean that Iran, when it can’t manipulate us, will simply manipulate Israel, all of which will serve to manipulate Arab opinion, and this whole stupid dance will continue pretty much indefinitely, with increasing cost to us here in the US, since you appear to be representative of the side that really truly believes there’s a solely military solution to Hizbullah
The hail of rockets, btw, reached a record on the penultimate day of the conflict, when Hizbullah was allegedly supposed to be “degraded”, or something. Also, those two soldiers are still missing. Which means the campaign accomplished precisely nothing, militarily.
It did succeed in uniting Lebanon against Israel, giving Syria and Nasrallah the chance to wave its finger at the Hariris and Jumblaat and say “I told you so” (Nasrallah’s been particularly pungent on this point:* “I want you never to forget that this is the U.S. administration, Lebanon’s friend, ally and lover,” he mocked in a speech on Thursday. He also issued a pointed warning to other Arab leaders that if they spend more time defending their thrones than the people of Lebanon, they might find themselves pushed off those thrones."* I would love to know: how does this serve the interests of the US?), and of course gave Iran the chance to continue to defy the UN. If that’s what you wanted, by all means call for more of the same. If not, consider that what you’ve been calling for and what you’ve been arguing for accomplished nothing, that there’s zero evidence it ever will, and that continuing down the same path will continue to provide those same results.
In the real world, that is. This may vary from your perception of it, of course.

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@Xtisme

Apart from flooding the area with troops, I agree with your analysis, and reckon that a lot of what you say was actually going on behind the scenes. In fact ‘is still going on’ is more accurate.

@Pantom

I don’t think anything anyone does will have much effect on Arab opinion. Nasrallah is a windbag as is that Iranian twit. They are preaching to the converted.

Most Arab leaders live in fear of their own populations, and dread a theocracy. It has been like that for years. Whatever the windbags say, true or false, it will not change a thing.

Yet again, you bring up the two kidnapped Israelis, they were totally irrelevant, it was the Katyushas that jerked Israel’s chain. Nobody expects them back, nobody ever did.

I don’t think the USA had that much to lose, the cock-up in Iraq has destroyed a lot of their credibility and aroused enough animosity. Not that people don’t believe that they are very capable of fighting and winning a high tech and/or conventional war. They could wipe out Iran with no problem, they just can’t occupy places. Well not humanely.

Israel has proved that it is very willing and capable of conducting a high tech war, if provoked. That point has not been lost on Iran and more importantly on Syria.

I agree that it would have been a lot better if none of this had happened, but I can’t see what else Israel could have done in the circumstances.

I reckon that the sheer scale of the devastation has rattled the West Bank and Ghaza, which will not necessarily be to Hamas’s benefit - notice how Israel is steadily picking up Hamas leaders - probably with Al Fatah’s covert assistance, and definitely to their delight.
Al Fatah hate Hamas.

I reckon that when we look back on this in a years time, it will appear as if events were pretty much inevitable, and that short spat, cleared the air and set of a chain of rather desirable events.

I predict loss of support for Hamas, some sort of agreement between Syria and Israel, and no more Katyushas.

It will look as if Iran tested Israel’s mettle, and got a reaction that was rather more determined and effective than they expected.

Hezbollah and others might brag about a ‘victory’, but I doubt that many people would want to experience a similar ‘success’.

I hope my predictions are correct.