Hi Nadine Carroll; Re: "If Israel wins, Lebanon faces a renewed civil war. If Hezbullah wins, Lebanon will turn into another Shia-run Iran in little."
I doubt that Hezbollah would be able to dictate Iranian policies to the rest of Lebanon. Syria, for example, is more or less secular.
Re: "Either way, the prospects for the Sunni are not bright. Yet they still cheer!"
You're making the same mistake the majority of this thread made before we invaded Iraq. Yes the Iraqis hated Saddam, but that doesn't mean that they would welcome Bush. The corresponding principle regarding Israel is that yes, the Arabs have conflicts with each other but that doesn't mean that they love Israel. If anything, the dustup in Lebanon is uniting the Arabs.
Re: "Do you contest my point that if those people in the cafe were Jews instead of Sunni, they would be reacting completely differently?"
Oh heck no! Look, I'm the last guy that you should be trying to convince that the Arabs hate the Jews. Yes there are plenty of people who deny this, but I think it's rather obvious and I fail to see how anyone could think otherwise. My suspicion is that a lot of people who argue otherwise are lying. Oh, maybe they're just fooling themselves.
The other half of this fact of hatred is that the Arabs severely outnumber the Jews in the area. These facts are the underlying demographic reasons that Israel (as a Jewish state) is doomed.
Re: "Hizbullah was well dug in. How long did it take the Marines to take Iwo Jima? Nobody was accusing them of war crimes everytime a civilian died, either."
The comparison is inappropriate for a number of reasons. First, the US right now has a population of about 300 million. Israel is about 7 million. To convert Israeli losses to proportionate US losses you have to multiply by about 40. Even back in WW2, the US population was vastly larger than Israel's is now.
Second, the US was fighting a war, Israel is not. The Israeli government even admits this, despite the fact that some of what are listed in the history books as Israel's "wars" have casualty counts smaller than many disasters at sea. No, the conflict in Lebanon is fairly bloodless with very limited objectives on both sides. A better description would be a "phony war", if even that. WW2 was a "total war", something that Israel has never experienced (Israel was not yet a state when Hitler's Germany performed their barbarity).
Third, the US is a major nation and was capable (and eventually did) conquer Japan, occupy it, and force it to reform. Israel is a runt state that is too weak to militarily occupy any of its neighbors. If you will carefully read the history books, you will find that the US only had to beat the bejesus out of Japan once. Israel, by contrast, is now going into Lebanon for the third time because it is too weak to conquer its enemies. Probably the reason that the US had to fight Germany twice was because the first time the war ended with an armistice instead of an unconditional surrender.
I keep telling you that the trend is not in Israel's favor. When advanced countries use advanced military technology on lagging countries, the lagging countries catch up. Over the long term, military advantages drift to the party with the larger population and territory. This is not Israel. Hints of this are drifting into the consciousness of the American public, for example:
Missiles neutralizing Israeli tanks
Hezbollah's sophisticated anti-tank missiles are perhaps the guerrilla group's deadliest weapon in Lebanon fighting, with their ability to pierce Israel's most advanced tanks.
Experts say this is further evidence that Israel is facing a well-equipped army in this war, not a ragtag militia.
...
seattlepi.nwsource.com
And the Israeli press is heavily laden with articles complaining that the Israeli government went into the war with unreasonable expectations and then fed BS to the public about having destroyed Hezbollah's missiles.
By the way, on the subject of guerilla war, you should read the US military Field Manual FM 100-20 on the subject and concentrate on the part where it describes how guerillas switch between holding territory and "fading away" into the civilian population. It used to be on the net but I can't find it right now. Anyone interested in the subject will have it on their library.
Along that line, look at pages 25-26 of the following article which describe how one properly runs a counterinsurgency:
Fracturing the insurgent movement through military, psychological, and political means, to include direct strikes, dividing one part against another, offering amnesties, draining the pool of alienated, disillusioned, angry young males by providing alternatives, and so forth. Relationships within insurgent movements are not necessarily harmonious. Cabals within the insurgency often vie for leadership or dominance. Identifying these rifts and exploiting them may prove to be a coup for the counterinsurgency strategy;
Delegitimizing the insurgent movement in the eyes of the local population and any international constituency it might have;
Demoralizing the insurgent movement by creating and sustaining the perception that long-term trends are adverse and by making the lives of insurgents unpleasant and dangerous through military pressure and psychological operations;
Delinking the insurgent movement from its internal and external support by understanding and destroying the political, logistics, and financial connections; and,
Deresourcing the insurgent movement both by curtailing funding streams and causing it to waste existing resources.
strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil
So far, Israel has made progress at most on the Delinking and possibly Deresourcing points, but this has so far had no effect on the numbers of rockets landing on Israel nor on the number of Israeli military casualties. On the other hand, from reading the Israeli newspapers it appears that Hezbollah has made some progress on demoralizing the Israelis and it is clear that their legitimacy has risen greatly not only among the Lebanese, but as well among the Arabs and even among the Moslems in general.
In short, as so many editorial writers in Israel say, this is no way to run a war. Will things get better for Israel? I doubt it. Never forget that you were already run out of Lebanon once. This time, with the improvement in tactics and weapons, and with the morale supporting knowledge that is has already been done before, it can only be easier for your enemy.
-- Carl |
