Hi geode00; Re: "You think Israel is calling up 30,000 reservists to find 2 kidnapped soldiers?"
No, I thought I was pretty clear on this. I said that first, Israel really hadn't called up those reservists, but instead signalled that they were thinking about it. Second, I said that the number was only at most half the number they'd need to do a real invasion of Lebanon. Finally, I said that while making a real invasion of Lebanon seemed like what Israel was going to have to eventually do, they sure didn't seem like they were wanted to.
The news that Israel is postponing the invasion pretty much has to be for reasons other than that they are waiting for a UN peace agreement. I would think that the military asked for another couple days for planning. Those 15 soldiers killed the other day included another crop of officers. I think it was 2 captains this time, one of whom was a company commander. These have to be the results of ambushes, and pushing deeper into Lebanon would vastly increase that sort of problem.
Hezbollah has turned out to be considerably tougher than expected, and I would think that the IDF would want to add extra time for training. Given the nature of the problem, I would think that the IDF is asking for an extra 6 weeks for retraining, not just 2 or 3 days for planning.
Israel's losses in this conflict have been quite heavy. One must note that the population of Israel is 40x smaller than the population of the US. So those 15 KIA they took the other day are equivalent to the US taking 600 KIA. In one day, that would definitely put the US off its feed.
Israel has to be asking whether they really want to be the lead elements in Bush's war on terror. They already pulled out of Lebanon once. To get an idea of the Israel tolerance for KIA, one should note that those 18 years of Lebanese occupation generated something like 1500 Israeli KIA, or about two KIA per week. Recent casualty rate in Lebanon is definitely NOT okay with the Israelis. These casualty rates are approaching the numbers Israel took during the war for independence of the late 1940s, but the modern Israeli public is far more accustomed to peace than their grandparents.
-- Carl |
