It looks like the war being fought by Israel against Hezbollah and Hamas is going to end up being a war of attrition. Already Israel is indicating that Hezbollah is running out of long-range rockets.
Under the old "shoot and run" protracted war plan, the one devised by Communist and Islamic terrorists during the last 50 years and used with great effectiveness by Hezbollah, the terrorists mounted a low-key, though continuous, series of attacks against a much more powerful enemy. When the powerful enemy retaliated with overwhelming force, the terrorists begged for mercy from the international community and accused their enemy of a "disproportionate response" -- all the while continuing to amass stockpiles of war materiel and recruit new fighters.
But Israel has taken the fight to Hezbollah; instead of honoring Hezbollah's protracted timetable, Israel is simply saying, "Wanna piece of me? Then we fight right now and we're going to throw everything we've got at you." Under this accelerated war scheme, Israel hopes to put Hezbollah in a real bind, because they believe that Hezbollah is neither equipped nor trained to take on the Israeli military in a head-on conventional battle.
Ultimately, Israel's long-range goal for this short war seems to be the decimation of Hezbollah -- its leaders killed or in hiding, its small arms and ammunition depleted or destroyed, its larger more threatening weapons like Katyusha rockets either depleted or destroyed, and its ability to rearm itself severely crippled through destruction of roadways, airstrips, and through international pressure against the nations supplying the arms. Then Israel will consider discussing a "peace" plan.
Israel is taking care of the attrition part quite handily, though they are destroying a great deal of civilian infrastructure and taking a great number of civilian lives in the process. The United States hopes to put together an "umbrella" of nations that will provide international pressure on Hezbollah and on the nations who are supplying them with arms. If Hezbollah has few arms and no powerful long-range rockets with which to threaten anyone, these two plans just might work.
And I desperately want to see both Hezbollah and Hamas go down in flames.
But over at Hot Air, Allah isn't so sure. He thinks that Israel has been less-than-successful so far, and that international pressure will hamper Israel before they get the job done anyway. He also wonders how effective this war will be against the real powers behind Hezbollah and Hamas: Syria and especially Iran.
Iran is the ascendant power in the region and they wouldn’t hesitate to have [Syria's] Assad replaced with a more cooperative, um, puppet if he made a move towards cutting off Hezbollah.
I wonder if Syria or Iran would be crazy enough to start openly pulling triggers themselves?
And did you read that John F. Kerry believes that if he were president, none of this would be happening? Really now. But for the real stunner, you have to read his remarks:
"The president has been so absent on diplomacy when it comes to issues affecting the Middle East," Kerry said. "We're going to have a lot of ground to make up (in 2008) because of it."
... "This is about American security and Bush has failed. He has made it so much worse because of his lack of reality in going into Iraq.…We have to destroy Hezbollah," he said.
So is Kerry saying that he would have pulled out of Iraq and instead invaded Syria and Lebanon? And al-Qaeda wouldn't have responded to something like that? I guess he would have invaded diplomatically though, no doubt with the help of France and Germany and Russia -- certainly not like that clod Bush who won't talk to anyone but Israel.
And this guy wonders why he lost two years ago?
ADDED: Ralph Peters, whom I admire greatly, also thinks Israel could lose their battle with Hezbollah, pointing out that Israel's usually spot-on intelligence failed to detect the new weapons -- including cruise missiles -- that Iran and Syria have provided for Hezbollah, and reasoning, "If Hezbollah can hide rockets, Iran can hide nukes." He is also critical of Israel's over-reliance on air strikes and artillary bombardments.
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