One comment:
the ability to occupy hostile cities in the face of fierce opposition without resorting to mere devastation. The United States military could not have done a better job at urban warfare than the Israel Defense Forces has; Jenin has been badly battered, but neither it nor any other Palestinian city is Grozny. There's no antiseptic way of fighting in a city, but the Israelis did not resort to indiscriminate bombardment and slaughter of civilians. Palestinian civilians have died, but not en masse, more on the scale on which Americans have unintentionally killed noncombatants in Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Israeli casualties -- fewer than 50 killed in recent operations -- though painful, have been far below the norms of urban warfare, which is the most difficult kind of fighting.
This is true. Going over some old Lebanon '82 coverage yesterday, it hit me that the current operation looks quite benign by comparison on the death and destruction front. Israel's operation also looks good compared to Afghanistan, where I don't think the US ever really had much to say in either apology or defense of the dubious idea of shooting missiles from remote control planes at relatively tall guys who just might be Bin Laden, or at least looked vaguely similar from 20k ft on a TV link, or wiping out random caravans of tribal elders when some competing warlord or other said they were Taliban.
Grozny, I'd rather not think about. There's ugly, and then there's ugly. |
