Israeli Response - Justified?

[SWJED]

SWJED aka Bill. Your posts about the Israeli situation reveal a great deal of passion. My personal radar suggest some kind of personal connection or experience about this. Can you share it? Or does my radar need a tune up?

Also - SWJED is Dave... I have worked on Middle East issues on and off for years to include CENTCOM and MCIA as well as serving with 1st MARDIV during Desert Storm.

These tours of course have shaped some of my opinions. I am by no means an Israel apologist - that said - in the grand scheme of things we are facing an enemy that just happens to be an enemy of Israel...

On edit - just want to make sure that it is common knowledge that all opinions are welcome and encouraged on the SWC and the SWJ. My opinions are my own and I pride myself in acknowledging that in these chaotic and complex times I most certainly do not have all the answers and on certain issues I may very well be wrong...

[slapout9]

Understood. Fixing my radar (don't post until I finish my second cup of coffe). Didn't mean to forget Dave.

[hsa333]

As an American Jew and an avid student of history's Small Wars, I think that the counry-wide bombing of Lebanon is a miscalculation on behalf of Israel.

I understand that the message Israel is trying to impart to the Lebanese as a whole is "Clean up your own house", but I fear that all the invasion is going to do is just going to give them negative PR.

That being said, as a Jew and a Zionist I believe Israel has the right to defend itself, but I'm looking at this in the context of the GWOT, or rather from the big picture view that we're all in a global "guerilla" war. Out of all of the reading I've done (I'm a civilian with no military experience) I've come to believe that the primary center of gravity in a guerilla war is to intellectually and emotionally seperate the "population" from the terrorist. (And I know how difficult, if not impossible it is to do in this situation)

A full scale invasion, or full scale bombing of Lebanon I believe does nothing positive in that respect for Israel. By violently engaging the Sunni/Christian/Non-Hezbollah population of Lebanon, I believe Israel has turned an apathetic, tacitly non-hostile, segment of Lebanon against them at a time when they don't need more enemies.

Having said that, I think Israel got it's message across to non-Shia Lebanon after the first day when they just hit the airport and blockaded the port. I would not have been averse to seeing them invade the Hezbollah sanctuary in the south of the country, but I think that bombing Beirut (and therefore turning international opinion against them) will create more problems than it solves. I think the country-wide bombing was an overwhelming conventional warfare response to an unconventional warfare problem. Not only that, but it gives more propaganda fodder to Jihadists/Islamist-terrorists and has the potential to create more Jihadist/Islamist-terrorists.

However, I'm not naive enough to think that any response to a terrorist act (like the kidnapping in Lebanon) would play well on the Arab Street. I just think that smaller, more nuanced, surgical military action would have been the better option.