The war plan Israel did not execute
Israelinsider:
...As I said before, he is fighting like a liberal instead of a warrior. He is pulling his punches early and paying for them with increased casualties on both sides. The dithering war strategy is costly not only in lives but in Israel's position with thugs like Nasrallah, who think they are responsible for Olmert's bad decisions.
... Olmert was presented with an assiduously prepared and detailed operational plan for the defeat and destruction of Hezbollah within 10-14 days, which the IDF has been formulating for the past 2-3 years.
This plan was supposed to have begun with a surprise air onslaught against the Hezbollah high command in Beirut, before they would have had time to relocate to their underground bunkers. This was to have been followed immediately by large scale airborne and seaborne landing operations, in order to get several divisions on the Litani River line, enabling them to outflank Hezbollah's "Maginot line" in southern Lebanon. This would have surprised Hezbollah, which would have had to come out of its fortifications and confront the IDF in the open, in order to avoid being isolated, hunted down and eventually starved into a humiliating submission.
This was exactly what the IDF senior command wanted, as Israeli military doctrine, based on the Wehrmacht's blitzkrieg doctrine, has traditionally been one of rapid mobile warfare, designed to surprise and outflank an enemy.
According to senior military sources, who have been extensively quoted in both the Hebrew media and online publications with close ties to the country's defense establishment, Olmert nixed the second half of the plan, and authorized only air strikes on southern Lebanon, not initially on Beirut.
Although the Premier has yet to admit his decision, let alone provide a satisfactory explanation, it seems that he hoped futilely for a limited war. A prominent wheeler-dealer attorney-negotiator prior to entering politics, he may have thought that he could succeed by the military option of filing a lawsuit as a negotiating ploy, very useful when you represent the rich and powerful, as he always had. Another motive may have been his desire to limit the economic damage by projecting a limited rather than total war to the international financial powers that be.
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Very interesting, the IDF plan sounds like what some of us were hoping Israel was actually up to: total war to truly defeat Hezb'Allah in Lebanon. Until the West is willing to follow plans such as this one, victory will be out of reach because the enemy will survive (e.g., fleeing to northern Lebanon) to do more killing another day.
ReplyDeleteLet's assume for a second that Israel was actually able to destroy Hizbollah.
ReplyDeleteThen what? Lebanon is on the fast track to a stable democracy? Or another terrorist group rises up in its place? All of the innocent civilians who have had family members killed or homes destroyed, how does Israel think these people are going to feel once the fighting stops? Do they think that finally, after all these years, the Lebanese will see the light and start holding their own leaders responsible for peace and prosperity?
War is the simple solution. After this war with Lebanon there will be another. And underneath it all nothing has changed.
Defeating an enemy militarily can end a war. It is not the enemy's "feelings" that make a war unending, or bring about a "cycle of violence," it is the philosophy to which he is committed. Once a lethal philosophy gains political power, and murder ensues, we have every right to politically neutralize that philosophy -- by killing or demoralizing those who hold it. Just as there are no Japanese imperialists or German fascists today with any power, and today's communists are a shadow of the Soviet empire, so too we should neutralize the Islamic totalitarians. Otherwise we will just keep having 9/11's forever. (The Soviets imploded economically; we will not have it so easy with the oil-rich states of the Middle East. And when I was in college they said Islam was the fastest growing religion in the world.)
ReplyDeleteAs for war being the "simple solution," I'd say that when a powerful foreign enemy is bent on your destruction, war is the *only* solution. The enemy is committed to a political philosophy, founded in the Koran, which requires our death (since the US isn't about to accept shari'a), so attempts at diplomacy are a farce.
We actually agree that despite the "small" wars so far, "underneath it all nothing has changed." I'm saying that what is underneath our enemies is a specific philosophy. You seem to think there is hope we can talk them out of the political implications (shari'a or death) of their philosophy. But they are not open to reason, they are not about to reject the philosophy of Islamic totalitarianism. The torrent of suicide-murders suggests the level of their commitment.