Some excerpts from an exhaustive analysis of the Israel-Hez situation, along with a possible winning strategy.
Despite calls from many quarters for a deeper Israeli ground offensive into Lebanon, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his cabinet have thus far avoided the risky move.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) do not want a repeat of 1982. They know it is a new day, a new war. The old adage that “Generals fight yesterday’s war” does not apply to the IDF so far. Instead, the IDF has been waging a casualty-averse, politically-correct campaign that consistently comes up short. It is high time the IDF obliges Hezb’allah’s desire for suicidal martyrdom. . . .
In the case of Hezbollah, I erred in calling it a terrorist-guerrilla outfit. Hezb’allah possesses a professional, light-infantry army division augmented by terrorist-guerrillas and the majority of the Lebanese Shiite population. It is almost without a doubt the single best fighting force in the Muslim world. . . .
What is not normal for Israeli political leaders is the degree of indecision. One of Olmert’s Cabinet members, Eli Yishai, the Israeli trade minister, abstained from voting for increased offensive operations because he correctly deduced that another thirty days of combat was too short a period and added that:
...he believes the military should prolong its air campaign against rocket launchers. “In my opinion, entire villages should be eliminated from the air when we have verified information that Katyusha rockets are being fired from there. . . ."
In other words, he seems to suggest it is high time that Israel goes Roman on Hezb’allah. Short of an elusive satisfactory diplomatic solution augmented by a combat-effective international force that exists only on paper, Israel will have to apply a Carthage-like solution to Hezb’allah in Southern Lebanon unless she wishes to render the estimated 1,000,000 residents of northern Israel permanent subterranean dwellers. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg of nightmarish consequences to come for the Jewish State. . . .
If Hezbollah is a well-trained and well-armed light-infantry division defending the high ground from fortified positions, why bother fighting like rag-tag guerrillas? This is precisely where most of the experts went wrong up until about a few days ago. They now concede Israel is facing something rarely ever seen in this part of the world: a superb Arab fighting-force capable of resisting the conventional, linear combat tactics of the IDF. . . .
In order to prove its worthiness to the anti-Semitic hand-wringers of the international community, Israel is expected to take the first blow, for example, an Iranian nuclear strike. But unlike most European nations or the U.S., Russia, China, and much of the Muslim world, Israel cannot absorb a nuclear hit and survive. Thus in demanding that Israe l respond “proportionately” to her existential enemies, the international community is consigning the Jewish nation to another Holocaust. That is utterly unacceptable.
In the coming days, Israel will need to break out the hammer and anvil against Hezb’allah. A two-pronged IDF offensive up Lebanon’s coastline and eastern border, respectively, until it reaches the Litani River will require a force of about 24,000. An additional 20,000 will slog their way northward from southern Lebanon, uprooting Hezb’allah fighters and serving as the anvil to the hammer blow that will occur if the troops that reach the Litani turn south and hit Hezb’allah from behind.
Read the whole thing.