Hizbullah / Hezbollah (just the group)

[Ken White]

Steve:

David Halbertsam's new book The Coldest Winter offers some good insights with recent research. So does Clay Blairs The Forgotten War. Both are more detailed than Fehrenbach's classic that Global Scout recommends -- as do I -- This Kind of War. If you want some interesting reading, Ed Evanhoe's Dark Moon talks about US special operations and behind the lines efforts in Korea.

Don't know much about Hezbollah but will send you one document if you'll PM me with an e-mail. BTW, not at all sure I agree with the conclusions in the article you linked. Most of that is IMO biased and speculative.

Global Scout:

"...but I now wonder if that was the turning point in our history where we jettisoned our knowledge of irregular warfare and focused almost entirely on conventional warfare? To me that seems to the event that shaped our Army's leadership almost more than any other, and I would bet it influenced GEN Westmoreland's views in Vietnam. I recall a quote by a senior Army officer in Vietnam (I'm sorry I can't cite the source off the top of my head), who said we're not going to destroy our Army for this miserable little war. I think he meant were not going to devolve into irregular warfare tactics and risk another TF Smith in the event we had to fight a "real" war. Just a thought, but I would definitely like to this council's ideas on it."

Having been around before Korea, I'm in strong disagreement with that conjecture. World War I was the turning point. The Army got on the global stage and liked it. There were no irregular warfare commitments by the Army after WW I.

Then along came WW II and the 'big war' syndrome got firmly implanted. Further, since the bulk of the Army served in NW Europe; those that had served there got an extra share of promotions -- to the detriment of those who served in Italy and the Pacific. That was a terrible shame because those who had been in the latter two theaters were used to fighting outnumbered, used to being isolated and developed some innovative tactics -- whereas in NW Europe it became "High Diddle Diddle Right Down the Middle" with MASS -- no tactics to it other than kill 'em all and let god sort 'em out.

The NW Europe Generals with few exceptions led the Army into the big war syndrome and have endeavored to keep it there; their logical heirs, the Heavy Division fans of the Cold War kept the Army there. Even though their attempt with the Weinberger / Powell "doctrines" to force the Nation to do it their way failed miserably, I have little doubt they'll try again -- are trying now, in fact. In my view, that is very short sighted. Dumb, even...

That NW Europe mentality was shown in Korea by Walker and most of the Division Commanders. Couple with MacArthur's pathetic staff, they screwed up Korea. It took Ridgeway (NW Europe but from a very different tradition than the Armor folks) to turn it around and then Van Fleet, a NW Europe guy, who had other experience in Greece, to keep it going.

Edited to add: Korea, BTW, was viewed by the senior leadership of the Army in just as poor a light was later was Viet Nam. Most of 'em hated Korea, Truman and everything to do with it. The majority of the Army commanders there misused heir Armor because they tried to fight a European war in the hills and paddies of NE Asia. We made a lot of mistakes there.

In Viet Nam, Harkins set the course early on; Westmoreland was not an innovator so he just followed Harkins lead. Both were NW Europe alumni. So we tried to fight a land war in Europe in the paddies of SEA. Stupid. Sad thing is, most of the units who were there in 1965-66 knew how to do COIN but were directed to do the search and destroy foolishness instead. Seven long years of dumb tactics. We made a lot of mistakes there, too...

Bruce Palmer Jr. was DepComUSMACV, a Pacific veteran and an innovative thinker -- he was the architect of the the plan Abrams adopted and that led to the success of CORDS. After seven years, we started doing it righ but it was too late politically -- all because the Army blew it going in...

When the Army designed the Pentomic structure in the mid-50s, all the Airborne, Pacific and Italian veterans not only coped with but supported the structure -- the NW Europe types screamed about it -- they weren't flexible enough to adapt. They outnumbered the others so the concept was scrapped in less than ten years. When the entire Army (outside Europe...) started COIN training in 1962, they took to it pretty well and most units got good at it. Those folks went to Viet Nam in 1965-66 and knew what needed to be done. When the Second Team came in in 1967, guess where most of the replacements for Commanders came from...

Nah, Korea didn't do that -- the damage was done long before then and Eurocentric thinking is the culprit.

[Merv Benson]

Iran and to some extent Syria supplied Hezballah with beau coup rockets for a purpose beyond responding to a Israeli attack on on Lebanon. Iran wanted the rockets to act as a strategic deterrent against an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. In that regard the war was a spectacular failure for Iran, because the missiles were so ineffective that Israel would have no difficulty making the decision to wipe out the nukes because they are potentially much more dangerous to Israel.

Another remarkable aspect of the Hezballah rocket attacks is that they only hit IDF forces by accident if at all. In other words the rockets were completely ineffective on military targets and were not that effective in hitting population centers that were the likely targets.

Hezballah's defenses in Southern Lebanon were somewhat effective in slowing an Israeli advance, but would have been ineffective against a determined invasion. Israel also demonstrated the ability to operate behind enemy lines and disrupt operations.

Israel's biggest failure was in using combined arms operations. They had an air war and a ground war, but they did little to tie the two together. They would have been much more effective if the ground forces had been used to "fix" enemy hard spots to be knocked out by the IAF.

While Hezballah may claim it won with a draw, Iran should have a different perspective. The IAF attacks in Syria should also have Iran worried.

[Global Scout]

Ken,

You put a lot of history in your last vote that I'm not familiar with, or only vaguely familiar with, but I'll get on it when I return from this extended TDY. While WWI may have been the turning point where the Army developed a myoptic focus on big wars, the Army did quite well in Greece immediate after WWII, and they established a constabulary force in post WWII Germany to control the population there and rid the country of the remaining few Nazi true believers who tried to start an insurgency. As you said we got it completely wrong in Vietnam to start with, just as we did in Iraq, which points more to the failure of our officer corp than the politicians, though both were to blame. If it was new territory, then the mistakes we made would be understandable and pardoned, but the mistakes we're making now could have been avoided if we didn't officers who blindly adhere to the war is war mindset. The American people should speak out strongly against incompetence in the Army. Losing our young people in pursuit of national security is a terrible necessity, but losing them to incompetence is not acceptable.

[Ken White]

the Constabulary in Germany post WW II. It was more dog and pony show than effective -- but it did work well enough to deter any resurgence, no doubt about that.

There were some minor successes other than Greece but IMO you got this 110% correct:

"If it was new territory, then the mistakes we made would be understandable and pardoned, but the mistakes we're making now could have been avoided if we didn't officers who blindly adhere to the war is war mindset. The American people should speak out strongly against incompetence in the Army. Losing our young people in pursuit of national security is a terrible necessity, but losing them to incompetence is not acceptable."

Stay alert and keep your head down.

[tulanealum]

The success in Greece had more to do with the Greeks than with us...and the idiocy of the Communists there...

[Ken White]

of the KKE and its armed factions but we helped a great deal, not least in getting Papagos in position and training said Greeks. An even bigger contributor was really the USSR / Yugoslavia break up. There would have been no success at the time without all those elements.