Can't stop

IN THE NEWS
Chirol at ComingAnarchy.com kinda gets the situation in Lebanon, and kinda doesn't. Here's a quote:

Israel understands that their only option is complete victory. Anything less than the destruction of Hizballah as a terrorist group (i.e. their armed wing) will only strengthen them and weaken Israel.

Except, the way this war is being fought, Israel won't destroy Hezbollah. Not only was this war poorly planned and executed, but it's also clear that Israel is running out of time.

However, the biggest problem with Olmert's strategy--at least, the maximalist version of it, which Chirol seems to advocate--is that Israel has never believed that it could annihilate its enemies. That's a wise assumption underlying Israeli grand strategy: no matter what the level of threat, Israel's response has never depended on the complete destruction of its enemies. In spite of constant PLO attacks and repeated attempts by hostile Arab governments to crush Israel militarily, no Israeli cabinet ever made the obliteration of its enemies the definition of victory. However, Israel has clearly won most of its wars.

Chirol hits closer to the truth with this statement:

The only other option is to create a large enough buffer zone inside Lebanon to protect Israel in the future which, however, would only continue the tit for tat fighting further north.

However, Chirol undermines his own analysis by making it sound as though this "minimalist" version of the Olmert strategy is equivalent to automatic defeat:

Indeed, what American Left, U.N. and Europeans fail to understand in their knee jerk reaction is that a cease fire would be an automatic victory for Hizballah. As a 4GW movement, they need only to stay in the game to win.

That generalization about guerilla organizations is true--to a point. Insurgents make mistakes. Had Israel responded more deftly to the kidnapping of its soldiers and the rocket attacks on its civilians, Hezbollah might have faced even greater animosity from the majority of Lebanese, sick of being dragged into war by armed factions like Hezbollah. Had Israel not muddled the moral dimension of the conflict with its meat cleaver methods, Iran and Syria might be having a harder time supporting Hezbollah. Instead, the disproprtionate focus of Lebanese civilians, Israeli voters, and foreign diplomats is on Israel's methods, Israel's mistakes, Israel's real agenda in the current conflict.

Guerrillas and terrorists often lose. They can't win if they don't "stay in the game," but short-term survival does not immunize them from their own long-term mistakes. Unfortunately, the governments that revolutionaries are trying to defeat often obligingly make their own, bigger mistakes--as Israel has in the current war.

Comments

[chirol]

I appreciate the link. I've been a big fan of A&A for awhile now albeit a bad commenter!

Your points are well made and indeed, from an realistic Israeli standpoint, they can never hope to defeat their enemies completely. You make a good point about Israeli's choice of response. Their choice has put the focus entirely on them and we all know media wars are almost impossible to win.

Yet, with Hizballah growing stronger and nothing being done to disarm and disempower them, massive force is understandable and more likely simply a method of getting enough intl concern and attention to force the intl. community to deal with it.

[chirol]

A&I I meant.