Hi michael97123; Re: "I would like you to pursue your one war away from peace statement. What also puzzles me in what you write is how the arab side will accept peace given the change in the balance of power you write about. So i go back to the type of war that is next and the level of devastation on the arab side that is likely to bring them to the table as they dont have the weak demographics that israel has."
When I say that Israel is one war away from peace I'm talking about your own mistaken ideas and the mistaken ideas of people just like you. You still think that peace will arrive with a victory for Israel. How can you imagine this when you have seen how things have been trending since 1967?
The Arabs will accept peace when they have achieved their goals in Israel/Palestine, and not till then. As far as dishing out a "level of devastation" sufficient to change the minds of the 200 million Arabs, the hell you think that Israel is capable of doing this when they had to accept a cease fire with 3 to 5 thousand guerillas? Israel had to beg for a cease fire not because she was defeated on the battlefield, but instead because she was unable to attain her objectives on the battlefield, that is, she could not stop the rain of rockets.
Yet despite this you still dream of a peace that requires that Israel (a runt state of 5 million) defeat the Arabs? Hezbollah was supplied as much by the Iranians as the Arabs. When you talk about putting a "level of devastation" onto the Arabs you are making the problem smaller than it really is. Israel has to defeat the Moslem countries, maybe a billion people. Given that less advanced countries are generally willing to accept higher casualties than advanced countries, your hopes simply cannot be attained.
Re: "One more question, Isnt the geography of lebanon somewhat unique in the area in allowing a guerilla force to dig in and conceal weaponry or is that offset by the fact folks can hide weapons in their homes and schools and be immune from israeli attacks."
If you go back and read the reports filtering back from Israeli soldiers, you will find that Hezbollah mostly fought from prepared positions while it was the Israelis that sought cover in Lebanese cities. Now the geography of Lebanon is very useful to guerilla fighters, but the similar things can be arranged in regions of total desert. It takes considerable effort, but the basic idea to defend any random piece of desert is this:
First, you figure out how close "bunker busting" munitions have to be dropped in order to achieve success against very deeply dug in troops. Second, you arrange for a very wide region to be covered with fake bunker targets spaced apart by that dimension. Third, you arrange for some of those fake bunker targets to be real, but for the enemy to be unable to detect which are which. You do this by excavating from underground. That is, the point where an excavation begins is obvious and visible from the air, but the point where it emerges is not. After you complete the excavation, you fill back in the point from which it was excavated so that is not weak point.
It's not easy, it's not inexpensive, but it can be done. When you're done, you've produced too many targets to target, and a well dug in enemy. I presume that Hezbollah did some variation of this, otherwise the Israelis would have known where the excavations were and would have taken care of them. The principles by which you produce hidden excavations under the full view of the enemy are quite old, (that is, making the obvious point where you dump the dirt not be a weak point of the redoubt) by the way. If you know any veterans of the Korean war you might ask them about it.
Carl |
