IF the
SAF has to fight IDF on the same grounds, it will do well to take a
leaf out of the Hezbollah efforts in dealing with the Israeli War
Machine.
From commentaries and analysis of the recent Israeli-Hezbollah
fights, it will seem that the IDF had suffered a major dent in
their invincible armor - and by a smaller guerilla
force.
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Lebanon War
Lessons Learned
Predicting an imminent resumption of fighting with Hezbollah, the
Israeli military is quickly studying the results of round one,
Aviation Week
reports:
While the [Israeli Air Force] contends it did its mission, others
are putting some of the blame for the offensive's mixed results on
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz,
the first air force officer to serve in that post. Critics contend
that his expectations for the IAF were too high. As a result, along
with continued fighting against Hamas in Gaza and the looming
roles-and-missions battle between the services, there are strong
signals the Israeli defense establishment is headed for a shake-up.
Additionally, a heated debate over future defense spending
priorities is expected in the coming months.
Meanwhile, The Nation is calling for a
renewed look at Israel's justification for the invasion:
We were saturated with the message that Hezbollah is a shadowy
terrorist organization that has spent years showering northern
Israel with rockets -- and that Israel had both the right and the
duty to protect itself from such attacks once and for all. Thus was
history instantaneously rewritten to Israel's own
specifications.
In fact, from the moment that Israel ended its last military
occupation of Lebanon in 2000 until the explosion of the current
war on July 12, UN observers report that there was not a single
casualty as a result of a confirmed rocket attack by Hezbollah on
civilian targets in northern Israel.
Results on the political front are less ambiguous: Israelis are
hopping mad, according to The New York Times:
Israel is politically roiled by public dissatisfaction with the
monthlong Lebanon war. The public has been surprised by the
inconclusive outcome of the campaign, frightened by unintended
consequences like the surging popularity of Hezbollah, and angry
that Israel's vaunted military has been shown to be less than
all-powerful.
Perhaps the most comprehensive "lessons-learned" report can be
found here, courtesy of the
Center for Strategic and International Studies (warning:
PDF!).
--David Axe
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-Hizb-e-allah and her iranian instructors have found new and
intriguing roles for wire guided atgms. That the iranians would
have had , what's the word?, the chutz-pah, to make seemingly
obselete atgms in such large numbers, thus reducing their unit
costs, and then deploying them against exposed infantry and
fortifications as guided man-portable artillery.
An 82mm mortar and several rounds,
enough to bracket a target versus a single anti-personnel Ra'ad 2
atgm with launcher a high probablity of a kill, which would you
want to lug around the battlefield?
WE may have just seen the light machine gun displaced as the
principle crew-served weapon of the infantry. My goodness a flying
guided claymore , what other
surprises do you think the iranians have come up with in their
isolation?
I know every u.s. commander who might have been tasked with
changing iran's thought's about mastering the nuclear fuel cycle on
the field of battle, is thanking every god man has ever imagined
for the glimpse of the future that israeli cannon fodder have
provided.
Thank you olmert for being such a predictable tool. Future
generations, if they even give any thought to the prime minister
who pissed away israel's aura of invinciblity in south lebanon,
will sing limmericks about you.
--Azrael
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