The 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli War (catch all)
Moderator's Note: Main thread enhanced by merging three smaller threads today.
10 August Jerusalem Post - Analysis: IDF Fumes Over Denied Victory by Yaakov Katz.
Quote:
The booms of Katyusha rockets continued; another day of what has become routine in the North. But the IDF was holding position, waiting for orders that did not come. After 30 days of fighting, the war with Hizbullah seemed to be nearing its conclusion Thursday.
Just a day earlier, the situation had looked drastically different. The security cabinet had approved the army's request to send thousands of troops up to the Litani River and beyond in an effort to destroy Hizbullah's infrastructure and to stop the Katyusha attacks. After the cabinet meeting, one division actually began moving north from Metulla. Its goal - to clear out al-Khiam and Marjayoun and to reach the Litani.
But then, under pressure from the US, Defense Minister Amir Peretz made a frantic call to Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz and ordered him to stop the division in its tracks. "We need to give the diplomatic process one last chance," Peretz told Halutz. The orders trickled down the chain of command and by the time they reached 366, it had already reached Marjayoun, a stone's throw from the Litani.
With the UN Security Council on the verge of passing a cease-fire resolution, the IDF understood on Thursday that Operation Change of Direction was ending, for better or for worse.
The IDF was disappointed. Senior officers said they had been looking forward to the fight. Reaching the Litani and eliminating Hizbullah from the villages on the way could have provided, senior officers believe, the victory that Israel has been trying to obtain since July 12. By Thursday night, the chance of that happening was drifting away...
... But the political echelon thinks differently, and from the first day of this war the politicians, senior officers said, held the IDF back from escalating its offensive and hitting Hizbullah hard. First it was the massive air campaign. Then came the limited, pinpoint ground raids. Only when all that failed did Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his cabinet approve a large-scale incursion into Lebanon and the re-creation of the security zone.
This wishy-washy decision-making process cost the IDF lives, according to one senior officer. "A military force always needs to be on the offensive, pushing forward and keeping the enemy on its toes," he said. "When you sit still for too long, you turn into a target and you begin to get hit again and again."
That is what has been happening. Over the past 30 days of fighting Hizbullah, the army has lost 83 soldiers, 35 of them this week. "That is what happens when you sit still and don't move," the officer said. "The enemy fortifies its positions and gains the upper hand."
The results of sitting in place can also be seen in the way most of the soldiers who died this week were killed. Hundreds of anti-tank missiles have been fired at troops in southern Lebanon. When a force sits still it becomes an easy target, officers said. One said he thought that the number of casualties from "just sitting and waiting for orders" could turn out to be the same as the IDF would have lost had it been allowed to make the push to the Litani...
...The IDF has been at a loss to stop the mostly old and primitive rockets. Hizbullah has been preparing for this war for the past six years and, alongside the 13,000 short-range Katyusha rockets, it has amassed thousands of anti-tank missiles..
Hizbullah has thousands of Soviet-built Sagger, Cornet and Fagot anti-tank missiles, as well as the French Milan and the US-built TOW, all supplied by Iran and Syria. These missiles are usually fired by a two- or three-man team.
There are many lessons the IDF needs to learn from the fighting about anti-tank missiles and the way to deal with the threat, a high-ranking officer said. But the most important lesson the top brass has to internalize is that it needs to bring clear plans to the political echelon and to always be on the offensive...
Same Subject: Very Different View
From Israeli Dissident Yitzhak Laor:
Quote:
The truth behind this is that Israel must always be allowed to do as it likes even if this involves scorching its supremacy into Arab bodies. This supremacy is beyond discussion and it is simple to the point of madness. We have the right to abduct. You don’t. We have the right to arrest. You don’t. You are terrorists. We are virtuous. We have sovereignty. You don’t. We can ruin you. You cannot ruin us, even when you retaliate, because we are tied to the most powerful nation on earth. We are angels of death.
The Lebanese will not remember everything about this war. How many atrocities can a person keep in mind, how much helplessness can he or she admit, how many massacres can people tell their children about, how many terrorised escapes from burning houses, without becoming a slave to memory? Should a child keep a leaflet written by the IDF in Arabic, in which he is told to leave his home before it’s bombed? I cannot urge my Lebanese friends to remember the crimes my state and its army have committed in Lebanon.
See: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n16/laor01_.html
Before anyone (everyone) howls for my stoning, let me say 2 things.
A. Laor is a dissident and as such he will state (overstate) his arguments to achieve his goals. I don't agree with his overstatements on the IDF; members of the IDF have on occasion stood against certain actions. As for a semi-miltaristic culture inside Israel, that is--for many reasons both regional and imported--quite a reality.
B. But look at it as a glimpse inside internal Israeli angst over Lebanon and the situation as a whole.
Best
Tom
Israeli Troops Criticize Army, Equipment
18 August Associated Press - Israeli Troops Criticize Army, Equipment.
Quote:
Israeli soldiers returning from the war in Lebanon say the army was slow to rescue wounded comrades and suffered from a lack of supplies so dire that they had to drink water from the canteens of dead Hezbollah guerrillas.
"We fought for nothing. We cleared houses that will be reoccupied in no time," said Ilia Marshak, a 22-year-old infantryman who spent a week in Lebanon.
Marshak said his unit was hindered by a lack of information, poor training and untested equipment. In one instance, Israeli troops occupying two houses inadvertently fired at each other because of poor communication between their commanders...
In a nation mythologized for decisive military victories over Arab foes, the stalemate after a 34-day war in Lebanon has surprised many.
The war was widely seen in Israel as a just response to a July 12 cross-border attack in which Hezbollah gunmen killed three Israeli soldiers and captured two. But the wartime solidarity crumbled after Israel agreed to pull its army from south Lebanon without crushing Hezbollah or rescuing the captured soldiers.
Military experts and commentators have criticized the army for relying too heavily on air power and delaying the start of ground action for too long. They say the army underestimated Hezbollah, and that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert set an unrealistic goal by pledging to destroy the guerrilla group.
This week, Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz appointed a former army chief to investigate the military's handling of the war...
17 August Jerusalem Post editorial - Investigating the War.
Quote:
Defense Minister Amir Peretz's external investigatory committee, to be headed by former IDF chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. (res.) Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, might provide some useful information regarding the narrow question of military decision-making during the war. It will not be sufficient to determine the broader lessons of the war in the military sphere, let alone for the political echelon and our society as a whole.
The public, according to polls, wants a commission of inquiry. Such commissions, with the power to recommend legal sanctions against individual officials, were created in the wake of the Yom Kippur War, the killings at Sabra and Shatilla, and the deaths of Israeli Arabs at the hands of police during the riots in October 2000.
The record of such commissions is not a promising one. They tend to create an intense focus on only one question: who will pay with their job, or even be put on trial. Though some legal experts are proud of the strength of the law providing for such commissions, others, such as former foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, think they go too far, in that they do not even provide a right of appeal...
At least they're investigating
It appears that Israel made several strategic mistakes in the conduct of this campaign, but I wasn't aware of that their Army was in such disarray until recently, and it “may” explain why Israel relied so heavily on air power in this fight, resulting a propaganda or moral defeat for Israel in much of the West and probably all of the Arab world.
This appears to be another situation where capable leadership was ignored and Air Power / technical enthusiasts won the day (but lost the battle) in Israel’s decision making process. There is no doubt in my mind that Israel has numerous experts in conducting this type of fight, but they clearly were ignored.
Israel’s tactics resulted in very little damage to Hezbollah’s militia and actually helped Hezbollah politically. Furthermore the air attacks did very little to stop the rocket attacks on Israel. Ideally, Hezbollah should have been fought mano a mano with infantry, and probably with an amphibious assault to the north to conduct a pincher moment to block their escape routes. This would have been a bloodier fight, but it would have demonstrated Israeli political will and capability. Furthermore, since Hezbollah is state sponsored (not by Lebanon), then Iran should have at least received two black eyes and a fat lip as a warning they have going too far. What we have now is a narrative on the Arab street where Israel used their Air Force to kill hundreds of innocent Lebanese civilians (true), and that their infantry couldn’t defeat the Hezbollah fighters.
Now that the initial kinetic fight is over, the real battle for victory begins. While I think the Hezbollah can be still be defeated (I don’t mean totally, but significantly weakened) by the Lebanon and the West (Israel should be sitting this one out now), it will be extremely challenging. Hezbollah has many advantages:
1. The Lebanese people hate Israel for what they did to Lebanon.
2. The Hezbollah has an established chain of command and a strategy that they are implementing now (they’re inside our OODA loop).
3. Hezbollah is perceived as credible on the battlefield (the Lebanese in S. Lebanon trust them).
4. Hezbollah has an established infrastructure throughout Lebanon and will operate with information superiority.
We on the other hand must rapidly introduce UN peace enforcement forces to facilitate Lebanon's Army in disarming the Hezbollah, which they can't do on their own. If the West and Israel can take the lead in the IO war (it will be hard after Israel's moral set back) and convince the people of Lebanon that the Hezbollah are the source of their problems and they are delaying the rebuilding the Southern Lebanon, then just maybe we can turn this into a victory. However, we have to form a coalition, work under a UN bureaucracy, and the ultimate key to success is an under funded, under equipped and poorly trained Lebanese Army.
If I was Israel I would put an old war horse in charge of fixing their Army, they are going to need it soon.
War Stirs Worry in Israel Over State of Military
19 August Washington Post - War Stirs Worry in Israel Over State of Military by Doug Struck and Tal Zipper.
Quote:
Sgt. Lior Rahamin's Israeli reserve unit had not trained in two years. When its members were called up for the Lebanon war, they didn't have straps for their guns, spare ammunition, flak jackets or more than one good radio. There were other shortages: Twice their operations were canceled because they had no water to take; once they went two days without food...
From the failure to get food and water to the troops, to complaints of an uncertain war plan and overconfident generals, the Lebanon war is fast being viewed within Israel as a major stumble. Military and political leaders already are trading blame; some are expected to lose their posts. Officers say the mistakes show weakness in the military, the Israel Defense Forces, known as the IDF. Many Israelis worry that the failure of the military to squash the Hezbollah militia will make their country more vulnerable to other enemies.
"For four weeks we failed to defend ourselves against daily bombardments against our cities. This is a failure that never happened before," said Yuval Steinitz, a Likud Party member and former chairman of parliament's defense committee. "This is going to send a bad message."
Such fears were fueled by a strident speech by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at the end of the war, promising to follow Hezbollah's model to retake the Golan Heights. Less than 24 hours after the cease-fire, he boasted that Hezbollah had "defeated the legend of the army that had never been defeated."
Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan, a member of the Israeli army's general staff who is taking over as head of planning for the military, defended the outcome of the operation. "This was a unique war," he said in an interview Friday. "You can't judge it in a traditional way. Our war was much more like a war on terrorism than a war against an army. . . . It's not realistic to expect any white flag coming from the bunker."...
The complaints that have emerged as Israel's soldiers return from the field have heightened the country's concerns about the state of its army and the judgment of its leaders.
"If we would have gone in with more foot soldiers, we would have done more," said Avi Hubara, 40, a schoolteacher and reservist who volunteered to go to Lebanon to fight. "But the politicians were scared to make decisions. It was a failure. We got people killed. There was lots of friendly fire. We did not hurt the capability of the Hezbollah. We did not return the kidnapped soldiers. We did not win."...
Implications for the U.S.
Assuming these articles are an accurate reflection of Israel's Army, then what are the security implications for the U.S.? Although I frequently have been disappointed with Israeli strategy in dealing with their security problems, they are an ally that we are obligated to assist if they get in trouble, and if Syria or Iran feel emboldened enough after Israel's latest series of combat operations to launch a conventional attack with a supporting asymmetrical line of operation, then I could see a scenario where the U.S. military will have to come to Israel’s rescue. It seems like it was only yesterday that this scenario was unforeseeable, and if it happens, how will it impact our relationship with the rest of the Middle East as we endeavor to make progress in GWOT?
30 Tanks Wiped Out in Lebanon
Quote:
30 Tanks Wiped Out in Lebanon
12:01 Aug 11, '06 / 17 Av 5766
(IsraelNN.com) IDF officials admit that the biggest surprise of the ongoing war against Hizbullah is the ease by which terrorists have destroyed IDF tanks.
At least 30 tanks have been totally destroyed or seriously damaged in bomb and anti-tank rocket attacks involving state-of-the-art Russian anti-tank rockets.
About one-half of the military personnel killed in southern Lebanon were inside tanks.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=109793
This conflict has not gone as was usual in an Arab Israeli war.
I wonder what could be the reason.
Is it because of the state of art anti tank rocket? I believe RPG 29S was used.
Is it because of poor tactics?
Or, is it because the Hizbs were ingenuous in their tactics and use of weapons?
Poor political leadership and decision making?
Poor generalship?
IDF actually being ill equipped but nonetheless launched?
The politicians wouldn't let us?
I concur with Uboat and would add that Clausewitz's argument that war is an extension of politics is clearly beyond the comprehension of the Israeli officers lamenting to the press about how the politicians prevented their victory. First, a military victory was not possible, the best that could be hoped for was too pressure all sides into a political agreement (you could argue that was achieved, even if it is temporary, with the UN cease fire agreement). Second, a number of other articles clearly indicated that the Israeli Army wasn't prepared for a major battle due to equipment and other logistical shortfalls, and training shortfalls. There is wisdom in Tom's reply above, and unless Israel comes up with a feasible political strategy (much easier said than done), then a military victory will remain elusive.
Israel's Military Chief Admits Failings
24 August Associated Press - Israel's Military Chief Admits Failings.
Quote:
In a letter to the troops, Israel's military chief acknowledged publicly for the first time Thursday that there were shortcomings in the military's performance during the recent fighting with Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.
Israel went into the monthlong war as a united front against Hezbollah, but since the fighting ended last week, the country has splintered into a cacophony of reproachful voices.
Criticism of the military's preparedness and tactics swelled after the battles ended without a clear-cut victory for Israel. Questions about the wisdom of 11th-hour battles and reports of food and water shortages have fueled demands for a state inquiry into the war's conduct and the resignation of Israel's wartime leaders.
In a letter to Israeli fighters, military chief Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz wrote: "Alongside the achievements, the fighting uncovered shortcomings in various areas _ logistical, operational and command. We are committed to a thorough, honest, rapid and complete investigation of all the shortcomings and successes."...
Preliminary Lessons of the Israeli-Hezbollah War
17 August from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) - Preliminary Lessons of the Israeli-Hezbollah War by Anthony Cordesman.
Quote:
Instant military history is always dangerous and inaccurate. This is particularly true when one goes from an effort to describe the fighting to trying to draw lessons from uncertain and contradictory information. The following analysis is based largely on media reporting, data provided by Israeli and Arab think tanks, and a visit to Israel sponsored by Project Interchange of the American Jewish Committee. This visit made it possible to visit the front and talk with a number of senior Israeli officers and experts, but Israeli officers and experts were among the first to note that the facts were unclear and that it might take weeks or months to establish what had happened.
This analysis is, however, limited by the fact that no matching visit was made to Lebanon and to the Hezbollah. Such a visit was not practical at this time, but it does mean the lessons advanced analysis cannot be based on a close view of what Liddle Hart called the "other side of the hill."...
Much Soul-Searching Ahead for Israeli Army
27 August Los Angeles Times - Much Soul-Searching Ahead for Israeli Army by Laura King.
Quote:
Israel's much-vaunted military, which emerged bruised and bloodied from its 34-day conflict with the guerrillas of Hezbollah, is in the midst of an intensive reappraisal of the battlefield tactics, intelligence capability and weaponry it brought to bear in Lebanon.
Yet a war whose outcome veered closer to a loss than almost any in Israel's history is unlikely to result in fundamental changes in Israeli military doctrine, analysts and military officials say.
That is in part because Israel regards Hezbollah, a disciplined and highly motivated Islamist militia equipped with state-of-the-art weapons, as unique among its many enemies in the region, and strongly believes that its army remains capable of inflicting decisive defeat on any conventional force it might confront.
Most Israeli military strategists also firmly believe they could have won the conflict with Hezbollah had they not been hobbled by the missteps of a domestic political leadership untested by battle — a view that is likely to be aired repeatedly during what may be months of public inquiries into how the conflict was conducted.
At the same time, however, Israel is weighing the long-term implications of the militia's ability to inflict pain not only on Israel's military, but civilians. Israel's conclusions could have far-reaching effect on its dealings with the Palestinians, in particular with militant groups such as Hamas, the political ruling power in the Palestinian territories...
Hezbollah's ability to hold its own against the Israeli army, even for a limited time, has raised the specter of other enemies being emboldened to strike, perhaps together. But Syria, one of Hezbollah's chief backers, stayed on the sidelines of this conflict — fully aware, analysts said, that the Israeli military was capable of destroying not only its army, but its infrastructure and institutions of statehood.
Many Israeli analysts and commanders say the military's overall performance was far from the stinging defeat that Hezbollah claims to have inflicted. But they generally acknowledge that Israel's poor planning, carelessness and hubris played a part in high-profile failures at crucial moments, from the earliest days of fighting to the final hours...
Much has been made of Israel's overreliance on airstrikes to destroy Hezbollah's rocket-firing ability. The army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, a former air force commander, was a chief proponent of the fierce air assault that preceded Israel's last-minute, large-scale ground push into southern Lebanon.
Halutz, whose job is now in jeopardy, has acknowledged "shortcomings" in the way the offensive was carried out.
IDF Plans Massive Intelligence Overhaul
4 September Jerusalem Post - IDF Plans Massive Intelligence Overhaul by Yaakov Katz.
Quote:
As one of the lessons of the war in Lebanon, the IDF plans to ask the Treasury for an immediate budget supplement of NIS 10 billion, most of which will be invested in rehabilitating the Intelligence Corps, a high-ranking defense official told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.
Defense officials and politicians have accused Military Intelligence of failing to predict the outbreak of violence. In addition, it is also blamed for failing to adequately penetrate the Hizbullah command, as could be demonstrated by the failure to assassinate any of the group's top leaders or destroy its main nerve centers.
"There will be a massive investment now in Military Intelligence," the official said...
The war, he said, was a "wake-up call" for the country and showed the public and the government that the budget cuts over the years had created a military that was not ready to meet its challenges.
"They need to ask themselves what type of military they want to have," he said of the government and specifically the Treasury. "If they want the IDF to protect the country, then they need to allocate the necessary resources and funds."
The defense official said he was not concerned about being summoned to testify before an inquiry to investigate the IDF's level of preparedness and management of the war.
"For years we have warned that this would happen," he said. "Now that it has happened, it is time to fix things."
Israel: Winograd Committee Report Released
From today's VOA - Lebanon War Inquiry Could Topple Israeli PM. Reposted here in full per USG guidelines.
Quote:
An Israeli inquiry into last year's Lebanon war could topple Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. As Robert Berger reports from VOA's Jerusalem bureau, Israel is in political turmoil after the commission of inquiry declared that it is taking aim at the national leadership.
The commission of inquiry into the war in Lebanon announced that it will include "personal findings" on Prime Minister Olmert. Israeli politicians and the media believe that means Mr. Olmert will be condemned for the way he handled the war, which is widely seen as a failure.
Despite a 34-day air and ground assault, the Israeli army failed to defeat some 5,000 Hezbollah guerrillas in South Lebanon. In addition, reserve soldiers returning from the battlefield complained of poor preparations and a lack of food and ammunition.
The interim report is due out next month and the final one at an undisclosed date. There is broad speculation that a critical report could force Mr. Olmert to resign under the pressure of public opinion.
Former Israeli general Uzi Dayan expects the report to come down hard on the prime minister, the defense minister and the commander of the Israel Defense Forces who already resigned.
"They made their mistake in the war by decision making, not knowing how to use, how to operate a big military force like the IDF, and finally the neglect of the home front," he said. "Their big failure is no leadership, no strategy."
But officials in Mr. Olmert's Kadima party are adopting a wait and see attitude.
"It's all speculation," Cabinet Minister Roni Bar-On told Israel Radio. He said there is no indication that the commission will blame the prime minister for the failure of the war or recommend that he step down.
But just a year after Mr. Olmert won a landslide election victory, it is very unlikely that he will complete his four-year term. Israeli media say the collapse of the government and early elections appear inevitable.
Flipside of the COIN: Israel’s Lebanese Incursion Between 1982 – 2000
US Army Combat Studies Institute Occasional Paper 21 - Flipside of the COIN: Israel’s Lebanese Incursion Between 1982 – 2000 by Captain Daniel Helmer, US Army.
Quote:
In view of the adoption of the term “The Long War” by the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff to describe US operations against terrorism and state sponsored terrorism, we have decided to change the title of our long running series of studies on irregular warfare – from the Global War on Terrorism Occasional Papers to the Long War Occasional Papers.
This CSI Occasional Paper is the fi rst in the renamed series. The purpose of the series, however, remains unchanged. That is, to provide short historical monographs on topics of doctrinal and operational relevance to the US Army and military professionals for an Army at war.
We are therefore pleased to offer Long War OP #21: Flipside of the COIN: Israel’s Lebanese Incursion Between 1982-2000, by Captain Daniel Helmer. Captain Helmer’s study, written while studying at Oxford University, addresses the Israeli view of the threat posed by various armed factions in southern Lebanon over an 18-year period. This was a period during which Israeli used air strikes, ground invasions, and border operations to contain or defeat the military threat to its national security.
Among the key points the author makes in this study is the inability of Israel to use military force to secure a lasting political end state in Lebanon that was favorable to its security needs, despite some stunning battlefield victories.
Helmer also notes that both Palestinian and Hezbollah leaders recognized they could not militarily defeat Israeli military forces, despite occasional tactical success, but that this was not their political objective. Rather, they needed only to survive and to maintain their forces in the field to achieve their long-term objectives. Weaker powers have often employed this strategy against their stronger opponents. He also notes the steady dwindling of political and public support in Israel for the occupation of Lebanon and the role this played in Israel’s decision to withdraw from Lebanon in 2000.
As the recent 2006 Israeli attack into Lebanon against Hezbollah terrorists has shown, however, these strategic challenges and dilemmas remain unsolved. In the fi rst decade of the 21st century, it is clear that these dilemmas are not unique to Israel and that the United States might draw some insights relevant to our own situation.
The Combat Studies Institute also plans a future study on the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. We at CSI hope this Occasional Paper will contribute to the Army as it conducts operations in the Long War. CSI -- The Past is Prologue!
Used As a Military History Lesson
Quote:
If this alignment of interest between Amal and Iran would not have ensured a problematic occupation in and of itself, Israel’s actions in the south at the invasion’s inception virtually ensured a permanent schism between Israel and the Lebanese Shiite population. Avner Yaniv argues that Israel had no plan for administering the power vacuum that it created in the south through the destruction of the PLO mini-state. Ad hoc improvisation, which had always been a component of Israel’s conventional, offensively minded doctrine, led to “a series of reflexive fits drawing on Israel’s previous experience with comparable problems in the Sunni, Christian West Bank and Gaza Strip.”31
This had an almost instant deleterious effect on Israel’s relationship with the Shiites. In the early days of the war, while the siege of the PLO in Beirut was still ongoing, the Higher Shiite Council, led by Amal’s Shams al-Din, Sadr’s successor, urged the Shiites of Lebanon to reject as illegitimate Israeli interference in southern Lebanon and the imposition of Israeli-backed administrations in Shiite towns and villages. Shiites were urged “to reject the occupation and not to cooperate in any way with the Israeli-imposed local administration.”32 When I asked Baruch Spiegel if the IDF had done anything initially to win “the hearts and minds” of the Lebanese Shiite population, his answer was simple. “Not immediately. It took time until we modified. It took time.”33 If there was ever a real window of opportunity to win over the Shiite population, it was shut by the time the IDF “modified” its practices.
This installment of the JRTC CALL Cell BiWeekly History Lesson again turns to a product from the Combat Studies Institute. Occasional Paper 21 Flipside of the COIN: Israel’s Lebanese Incursion Between 1982 - 2000 by Daniel Isaac Helmer provides an in-depth analysis of Israel's 22-year long venture in Lebanon.
Helmer describes this Israeli experience as a defeat on three levels. The Israelis went into Lebanon to destroy the Palestinian Liberation Organization: they won sweeping tactical victories but never succeeded in their aim to crush the PLO. More importantly, the sustained existence of the PLO as champion for a Palestinian people was a strategic defeat directly tied to the beginning of the First Intifadah. The Israelis stimulated the creation of Hezbollah in Lebanon and then lost the asymmetric fight with the Shia militia, in the process turning the militia into a global threat. Finally as described by Helmer, the 1982 Invasion was to destroy the "terrorists" and as he shows, the net result was an increase in terrorism from pre-1982 levels.
As a former United Nations Military Observer in southern Lebanon (1987), I found this paper to be balanced and accurate. In many ways it explains what happened to the Israeli Defense Force in the 2006 fight with Hezbollah. But this paper transcends its role as a study of the conflict in Lebanon. It is very much a study of the unconventional versus the conventional. As such it is also quite relevant to US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
V/R
Tom Odom
Israel: Winograd Committee Report Released
39 April Jerusalem Post - 'Olmert Nade the Decision to go to War Unprepared'.
Quote:
After months of waiting and speculation, the Winograd Committee's interim report harshly criticizing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, and former IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. (res.) Dan Halutz over their actions during the first five days of the Second Lebanon War was released to the public Monday afternoon.
In conclusions much harsher than those expected ahead of the report's publication, Judge Eliyahu Winograd said in a press conference that "[The committee] established that decisions and the way they were taken suffered from the most severe flaws. We put the responsibility for these flaws on the prime minister, the defense minister and the former chief of staff."...
The prime minister bore supreme and comprehensive responsibility for the decisions of 'his' government and the operations of the IDF, according to the report.
Olmert made up his mind hastily, the report said, without asking for a detailed military plan and without consulting military experts. According to the findings, Olmert made a personal contribution to the fact that the war's goals were "overambitious and unfeasible."...
Behind the Headlines on the Winograd Commission’s Interim Report
Haninah Levine e-mailed a link to his Center for Defense Information article Behind the Headlines on the Winograd Commission’s Interim Report.
Quote:
In late April, the Winograd Commission, appointed by the Israeli government last September to examine the events of the 2006 Second Lebanon War, published its interim report. Media coverage of the interim report, which is not yet available in English, has focused mostly on the commission’s harsh evaluation of the nation’s civilian leaders, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz.
The 170-page document offers far more than just a report card on these politicians’ performance, however. It examines the behavior of the military, the government, the National Security Council, and even the media and the electorate over a six-year period which begins with Israel’s May 2000 withdrawal from southern Lebanon and ends on July 17, 2006, nearly a week into the war. It is both uncompromisingly honest and scrupulously fair, offering a 15-page discussion of “The Principles of Responsibility” and weighing at every turn the balance between individual, collective and institutional responsibility and plain bad luck. (The breadth of the commission’s findings reflects its composition, which includes Israel’s leading experts on public administration and human and civil rights law alongside two reserve generals.)...
Recommendations? The 2006 Lebanon War
I'm eagerly looking for stuff on the Lebanon War of 2006, but I know it's too early - all I've found are some articles online, and some interesting stuff about Hezbollah's anti-tank exploits using the RPG-29 (which apparently is one nasty mother).
Anyone know of anything in the works or available?
Matt