Anothiny Cordesman, who holds the “Arleigh Burke Chair” (whatever that is) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, is a well-known face on US television and much quoted on Middle East strategic affairs in the print media, too. He is a generally very professional strategic analyst, with a non-ideological approach that leads him to express strategic truths and judgments in an even-handed, objective way. (Which has frequently, in the past, raised the ire of the more ideological among Israel’s supporters in the US.)
Recently, though– and I’d love to know whether this was before or after July 12– the American Jewish Committee invited Cordesman on a special, very “insider-y” trip to Israel. (Who paid? Tell us, Tony!) In his usual workmanlike fashion, he has already, today, published a “working draft” of a study titled Preliminary Lessons of Israeli-Hezbollah War. It is interesting, primarily because of the window it offers into what he heard during, as he writes, a “trip made it possible to visit the front and to talk with a number of senior Israeli officers and experts.”
His most notable finding of all is this one, buried at the bottom of p.15 of the report:
- One key point that should be mentioned more in passing than as a lesson, although it may be a warning about conspiracy theories, is that no serving Israeli official, intelligence officer, or other military officer felt that the Hezbollah acted under the direction of Iran or Syria.
Why should we mention that “only in passing”, Tony? Your observation there does, after all, undercut just about all the pro-Israeli hasbara (spin) to which we’ve been subjected here in the US MSM over the past six weeks…
Elsewhere in his report, Cordesman probably more than returns the generosity the AJC showed in arranging his trip by engaging in some deliberate obfuscation about the degree to which the Israeli military engaged in “restraint” and “proportionality” during its actions in Lebanon. (See p.13.)
The text also includes this pair of howlers, halfway down p.10:
- Hezbollah … used Lebanon’s people and civilian areas as both defensive and offensive weapons.[Excuse me– how did they use Lebanon’s people and civilian areas as “offensive weapons”?? I’d love to find out more…] Israel certainly saw this risk from the start. While the Hezbollah did attack Lebanese civilian targets early in the war, [What the heck is he talking about here? I’m assuming “Hezbollah” there was a mistype for “Israel”?] these were generally limited. It did establish procedures for screening strike requirements and intelligence review of possible civilian casualties and collateral damage…
Since this is only still a “draft”, perhaps those howlers could be corrected before a final version is prepared?
Anyway, I guess that for me, the main interest of Cordesman’s paper is the window it offers into (what passes as) the “strategic thinking” of Israel’s senior commanders during the war. For example, regarding what the government’s actual war goals were during the war, he writes this (p.3):
- Israeli decision makers have not provided a consistent picture of what the goals for the war were, or what they expected to accomplish within a given amount of time. [II’ll say!] A top Israeli official did, however, seem to sum up the views of these decision makers when he stated that Israel had five objectives in going to war:
• Destroy the “Iranian Western Command” [I guess this is a reference to Hizbullah’s military capabilities?] before Iran could go nuclear.
• Restore the credibility of Israeli deterrence after the unilateral withdrawals from Lebanon in 2000
and Gaza in 2005, and countering the image that Israel was weak and forced to leave.
• Force Lebanon to become and act as an accountable state, and end the status of Hezbollah as a state within a state.
• Damage or cripple Hezbollah, with the understanding that it could not be destroyed as a military force and would continue to be a major political actor in Lebanon. [Yes, well, that was fallback position for them, wasn’t it. In the first few days, there was lots of rhetoric about “destroying” Hizbullah’s military capability.]
• Bring the two soldiers the Hezbollah had captured back alive without major trades in prisoners
held by Israel—not the thousands demanded by Nasrallah and the Hezbollah.
He then goes on to make cleverly obfuscating judgments about what Israel actually “achieved” in each of these five areas… though the bottom line in each case was still “not very much, at all.”
On p.7 he writes, quite explicitly:
- If the Hezbollah is crippled as a military force, it will be because of US and French diplomacy in creating an international peacekeeping force and helping the Lebanese Army move south with some effectiveness. It will not be because of IDF military action.
Right. And the US and French diplomats have not, actually, been succeeding very well in that, have they?
I think I’ll cite in full here p.14 of the report, which expresses Cordesman’s “bottom line” judgment about the effectiveness of the strategy that Israel’s national command authorities pursued throughout the war:
- It was never clear from discussions with Israeli officials exactly what the real original battle plan was, how much the IAF did or did not exaggerate its capabilities, and how much the IDF pressed for a decisive land campaign. It does seem clear that Israel always planned for a limited war, but it also seems likely that it failed to pursue a decisive strategy and battle plan within the limits it sought.
The initial air campaign against the medium and long-range missiles makes clear sense. These were a serious threat, and the attack upon them seems to have been relatively well executed—subject to the fact the IDF did not fully understand the threat because it did not detect the scale of Syrian missile deliveries. [Note that he makes no judgment at this point about the parallel effort the IAF launched, from the very earliest days of the war, to cripple crucial elements of Lebanon’s national civilian infrastructure.] The ground campaign, however, makes far less sense. Fighting to take a narrow perimeter in Lebanon of 2-5 kilometers overlooking Israel could never be a decisive campaign or hope to halt even the Kaytusha threat. Unclassified wall maps in the Israeli MOD clearly showed that many launch sites were to the rear of this perimeter, allowing the Hezbollah to retreat with ease, and there was no prospect of holding the perimeter without constant Hezbollah reinfiltration and attack. This essentially forced the IDF to fight the Hezbollah on the Hezbollah’s terms in urban warfare.
Either the Israeli political leadership, the IDF top command, or both seem to have chosen the worst of all possible worlds. They escalated beyond the air campaign in ways that could not have a decisive strategic effect and dithered for weeks in a land battle that seems to have been designed largely to minimize casualties and avoid creating a lasting IDF presence in Lebanon. In the process, the IDF had to fight and refight for the same villages and largely meaningless military objectives, given the Hezbollah’s ample time to reorganize and prepare.
When the IDF finally did decide to go for the Litani, it signaled its advance for at least two days, and had to advance along predictable routes of advance because of the terrain. It did not conduct operations from the north to seal off the Hezbollah line of retreat and had to fight in a rushed operation with no time to deploy enough forces to search out stay behinds or securely occupy enough space to be sure of what levels of Hezbollah strength did or did not remain.
At the same time, the air campaign continued to escalate against targets that often were completely valid but that sometimes involved high levels of collateral damage and very uncertain tactical and military effect. The end result was to give the impression Israel was not providing a proportionate response—an impression compounded by ineffective (and often unintelligible) efforts to explain IAF actions to the media. At times, it seemed the strategy was one of escalating until the international community had to act on Israel’s terms, rather than fighting the enemy. Such a strategy at best ignored the serious limits to Israel’s ability to force any international force and the Lebanese government’s ability to meet all its goals once a ceasefire was signed.
And this, from p.15:
- A number of Israeli experts felt the Israeli government was too inexperienced to fully address the impact of various scenarios on conflict termination. They felt the government and senior leadership of the IDF had hopes for conflict termination but no clear plan.
Depending on the official, officer, or outside expert briefing on these issues, these hopes seem to have been a mixture of hope that the Hezbollah would be easily defeated, that the Lebanese government or army would act, that the Lebanese people and Arab world would blame the Hezbollah, and/or that they could get UN resolutions and a UN sponsored international peacemaking force that would support Israel’s efforts. As for Israel’s broader image in the world, it seems to have hoped that victory would be its own justification, to the extent that it focused on the issue at all.
By the time of our trip, some officials claimed that the war was always supposed to take eight weeks and weaken the Hezbollah, not destroy it. Yet several Israeli experts claimed that some of the same officials estimated at the start of the war that it would last no more than two weeks and that Hezbollah would be destroyed as a military force.
Israel is notoriously better at defeating the enemy than at translating such defeats into lasting strategic gains. But the same criticism can often be applied to the US. As a result, the lesson the Israeli-Hezbollah War teaches about conflict termination is the same lesson as the one the US should have learned from its victory in the Gulf War in 1991 and from its defeat of Saddam Hussein in 2003. A war plan without a clear and credible plan for conflict termination can easily become a dangerous prelude to a failed peace.
We then have the observation about the relationship between Hizbullah and Ira and Syria, as cited above. Cordesman then continues (pp.15-16):
- It was clear that Iran and Syria conducted a massive build-up of the Hezbollah’s arms over a period of more than half a decade, that Iranian 747s routinely offloaded arms in Syrian airports, and that Syria provided trucks and shipped in arms and armed vehicles through the north and across the Bekaa. Iran did have advisors—evidently from the Al Quds force present with the Hezbollah—and some of their documents were captured, although Syrian advisors evidently were not present.
The issue of who was using whom, however, was answered by saying all sides—the Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria—were perfectly happy to use each other. Israelis felt Nasrallah had initiated the Sheeba farms raid on his own and that Iran and Syria were forced to support him once Israel massively escalated. Israeli officials did not endorse the theory that Iran forced the Hezbollah to act to distract attention from its nuclear efforts.
This does not mean that Iran and Syria had no influence or control. Syria could certainly have halted supply at any time. Iran set up a rocket and missile targeting and control center for the Hezbollah and may well have retained control over the Zelzal in any effort to preserve an eventual nuclear option or limited Israeli retaliation. The nature of meetings between commanders and officials from all three sides was described as uncertain, as was the exact role of the Hezbollah-Iranian-Syrian intelligence center that began to operate in Damascus during the war.
Some fascinating reporting on IDF senior-officer judgments there, I think. I don’t have time for further commentary of my own here, but let’s carry on discussing it on the Comments board.
I concur fully with Helena’s assessment here, particularly the stunning observation by Tony Cordesman that,
“no serving Israeli official, intelligence officer, or other military officer felt that the Hezbollah acted under the direction of Iran or Syria.”
In case anybody wonders why we are so impressed by this one quote, remember that it has been standard US “received wisdom,” in the words of no less than Richard Haas (now President of the Council on Foreign Relations) that Hizbullah would not have acted without the approval and direction of Iran. (Haas was quoted on the NewsHour saying such independence was “inconceivable.”)
I too have considerable respect for Tony Cordesman’s work; his encyclopedic military analyses often cross standard divides, he was an early critic of the Bush approach to Iraq, and yes, he was a generous help to a former student of mine. There are numerous important observations and criticisms in this report – though many are often “burried” or “toned down.” Some may find this “balanced;” others may still find far too much sugar coating.
Beyond the “howlers” Helena has already noted, there are several further statements and whoppers in this “draft instant history” that leave me, well, speechless… (which I’ll more or less list here in order of appearance)
p.6: “Deterrence is matter of perceptions, not reality.”
Really? No connection at all? So would Israel’s nuclear deterrent work if it didn’t have one? How about both – that deterrence depends on perceptions of reality?
p.8: “Reality does not wait for history.”
No doubt. That’s why God invented beltway think tanks like CSIS – and blogs. :-}
p. 9: “One key lesson that the US badly needs to learn from Israel is the Israeli rush towards accountability.”
Yes, the tradition is so in-grained that Israeli scholars who dare to question sacred cows about Israel’s founding (over 50 years ago) find their careers in jeopardy.
p. 12: “The US needs to approach these problems (of “civilian casualties” and “collateral damage”) with ruthless realism at the political, tactical, and technical level.”
“Ruthless realism”??? Isn’t that precisely the root of the problem?
p. 13: “Israel does face prejudice and media bias in the political dimension of war, but—to put it bluntly—this is as irrelevant to the conduct of war as similar perceptions of the US as a crusader and occupier.”
Irrelevant? What ancient text did TC get this out of? Yet at other points, AC does seem quite aware of the political consequences of military tactics – and how some are better than others!
p. 13/14: “In general, Israel seems to have made a consistent effort to keep its military actions proportionate to the threat in legal terms…” (Wow! — IF) if one looks beyond the narrow incident at Sheeba Farms that triggered the fighting and considers six years of Hezbollah military build up as a major threat that could target all of Israel with major Iranian and Syrian support.”
Tony Cordesman saves himself from sounding like Tony Snow by noting,
“The problem is, however, that the laws of war do not shape perceptions and current international value judgments. Israel also pushed proportionality to its limits by attacking civilian targets that were not related to the Hezbollah in an effort to force the Lebanese government to act.”
Yet even here, I can’t accept the notion that the “laws of war” are disconnected from international perceptions and value judgments. To the contrary, they are inextricably linked – and fought over. It’s the “new stuff” of international politics – a contest the US and Israel generally wage badly!
p. 17.: “Israeli officers and officials made it clear that Israel’s real reason for going to war, however, was the steady deployment of medium and longer range systems, and the potential creation of a major Iranian and Syrian proxy missile force that could hit targets throughout Israel.
I’m so glad we cleared this up…. So forget all those steady assertions about Hizbullah’s capture of Israeli soldiers or about “terrorism.” Its like the US invasion of Iraq; it was “all about establishing democracy” — not WMD’s, al-Qaeda or any of those stated reasons….
p. 20.: “The fact Israel faced some degree of technological surprise should not, however, be a source of criticism unless there is evidence of negligence.”
I think TC is here again deferring too much to what he was told, and not enough on independent research into what was known – and in public – before the start of the war. Ah, but that’s what the “truth commission” will tell us, no doubt.
p. 21: “Netcentric warfare.” I can imagine well-funded DOD and CSIS conferences will be named after this glitzy, internet-era sounding phrase, but why the precise term “netcentric?” AC seems to refer to “netcentric” warriors as a “distributed network of small cells and units acting with considerable independence, and capable of rapidly adapting to local conditions…” Ok, so how is a “distributed network” somehow “centric” to anything? Some clarification much needed here.
p. 22: “IDF army officers at the front noted that most such sorties (by the Israeli air force) were flown with delivery accuracies approaching 10 meters and close air support was extremely responsive.”
Aren’t we impressed? Talk about euphemisms. No doubt those attacks on civilian convoys, on the UN base, on the bridges, on the Lebanese communications systems, on that milk factory — all these “hits” would be considered within “acceptable parameters” in their “delivery accuracy” too…. Cordesman goes way up Hayakawa’s abstraction ladder to point out the problem that such “accuracy” is no guarantor of achieving ones military/political objectives:
“The advocates of escalation to intimidate and force changes in behavior at the political level are sometimes right; far more often, they are wrong. More often than not, such attacks provoke more hostility and counterescalation.”
p. 23: “No amount of training or discipline can substitute for combat experience, and the IDF had only dealt with a poorly armed and disorganized Palestinian resistance since 1982.”
This has to be the most puzzling assertion in the paper. What, after all, was the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 about – and the long painful occupation thereafter and belated withdrawal all about? No experience in any of that of relevance?
Page 23 also has a puzzling lesson highlighted as “Don’t Fight the Enemy on Its Terms.” Given that this paper almost entirely is about Israel’s strategy and failures, its almost comical to read TC referring to “the enemy’s terms” – the enemy in this case being barely mentioned, much less analyzed. What exactly were Hizbullah’s terms? What did it want? Who knows? TC doesn’t tell us. He repeatedly, if vaguely, references Israel not fighting Hizbullah behind the front lines, but given the massive bombing of much, if not all of Lebanon, that seems rather unconvincing at first glance.
Yet never mind; we’re still counseled to follow his sage advice to not fight on the “enemy’s terms.” Sounds like Mao, Hart, or Sun Tzu – but something is missing in the application here.
I have never been impressed by Anthony Cordesman. I can’t think of a single useful or original thing he’s had to say about the entire war in Iraq. (Remember that, Helena, the war in Iraq?) He’s heavily quoted and interviewed because of his unerring ability to navigate the middle of the road. I don’t know why he published this “draft” report, but I’m sure any controversial passages will be edited out of the final version.
[Note: this comment was a reply to a very hostile discourteous comment that someone called ‘Diana’ had contributed to the discussion. Diana’s comment got taken down before we saw Roland’s reply.]
Sweeping statements and junior school abuse don’t provide any entertainment or enlightenment for participants here, they hold no currency despite our sometimes frank exchanges of very different views. That’s why such basic ‘flaming” is so very seldom seen in this forum.
Diana, you could have seen for yourself if you bothered to look that anyone is welcome to debate or promote a point of view here, short of inciting criminal acts, but I for one ask you to argue to a more mature standard please. Note the request for comments that are courteous, fresh, helpful, and to the point. If you are really so incensed by lazy commentary, take a good hard look at your own post compared to what supposedly caused you to vent your spleen.
Helena, you must be heading for celebrity status if comments like the one above are starting to appear in any number. Could I suggest you add “dumb, lazy-ass broad” to the spam filter please, so we dont have to waste our time reading it again? Also maybe take a sec to check for other low level terms of abuse that may have missed the filter list.
I’d like to underline what Cordesman writes in the introduction:
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.
I do understand that this is supposed to be scholarly analysis regarding the tactical and strategic aspects of Israel’s war machine, yet isn’t the absolute absence of the slightest moral perspective eery? No hint of a qualm about the ethics of killing and maiming thousands of innocents from the sky as if this were a murderous video game. No reference to the obvious yet all-too-neglected fact that all this may have a tad to do with a certain illegal occupation (or occupations). But then maybe there would be no more trips for Tony!
I came away from the Cordesman “draft” with a sinse that its ultimate purpose was to contradict the perception that Israel’s military was defeatable and therefore no longer the deterrent force it has been thought to be. For example, during the “war” there seemed to be shock that Israel’s tanks were being destroyed. This, if true, would have major strategic implication given the central role of armor in the Israel Army. Yet, Cordemen makes light of it: something like 60 vehicles not all tanks most easily repaired. Again, overall I think the report satisfied Israel and why not? Why would they give him such privileged meetings and information if they did not think it was going to be to their benefit?
Arleigh Burke was a distinguished US Navy officer best known for commanding destroyer fleets. The Reagan administration commissioned Grumman and Bath to build a new destroyer class named after him. It remains perhaps the most advanced design in its class. I presume that Cordesman’s post was endowed by the two builders and other contractors. Burke lived to age 94 on his USN pension. He may have served on the board of various firms after retirement, but did not become an arms moghul. Many schools would sell their soul to get the instiutional backing enjoyed by Cordesman’s CSIS at Georgetown. Strong backing by military contractors is also useful to the scholars. If Cordesman asks to interview senior officers of some country’s miliitary, they do not answer, “Sorry, too busy.”
The “howlers” spotted in Cordesman’s draft will not go away. His IDF contacts fed him anecdotes which, unfortunately, no one will make him corroborate. He duly notes that he was unable to tour the Lebanon side of the “front.” If he does so, now or later, there is little chance he would seek or obtain contact with Hezbollah officials to obtain their “view.” He could not entice their candor, since contact to his sponsors is out of the question, and the militia would not answer his questions about missiles and fortifications or civilian shields. A scholar financed by Chinese or Iranian weapons merchants could extract more cooperation.
Cordesman merits recognition as something of a realist. Ne is no neocon Custer. But he also has some blind spots. Look at his 2002 era assessments of the strategic threat posed by Iraq. The question “What will it take to occupy and rebuild the country?” is only vaguely addressed. That elimination of Saddam might weaken US security gets only token oddball consideration.
Iran comes next in the docket. Cordesman’s voice on this dilemma might be welcome. Unfortunately, some of the CSIS endowment comes from missile and aviation contractors. Given the nature of his underwriters, he can hardly come out and baldly say that aerial weapons will NOT seriously degrade Iran’s presumed nuclear plans or cause fall of the theocracy. He can only write by proxy about Israel’s Lebanon fiasco and hope that serious people connect the dots. The most potent way to tell the realists “No way, José,” is to prescribe an Operation Olympic scale ground troop component that the US cannot possibly provide.
Rumsfeld might figure it out. Unfortunately, any reasons for caution might be drowned out by other sirens bidding W to rise to Churchillian “greatness,” without any inkling that, indeed, Iran could be W’s Gallipoli.
Regarding the quote from Mr. Cordesmans paper:
“no serving Israeli official, intelligence officer, or other military officer felt that the Hezbollah acted under the direction of Iran or Syria.”
I think it is important to distinguish between the possible unwritten endings: ‘in all matters.’ or ‘in the abduction of the Israeli soldiers.’ or ‘in its response to Israel’s invasion.’, etc.
This uncertainty permeates the entire cloudy relationship between Hezbollah and Iran/Syria. Personally, I believe that Hezbollah is the sub-nationalist voice of the Lebanese Shiites, and as such, has a certain amount of legitimacy and political capital, much of which it squanders – whether by choice or necessity – through its terrorist acts and relationships with Iran and Syria.
So it is particularly bothersome to hear daily from President Bush and/or his closest advisors that Hezbollah is nothing more than a ‘terrorist tool of Iran’. I can’t tell whether he truly believes this, or if it is merely a necessary distortion to fit the rest of his anti-Iran rhetoric.
Once again we are forced to decide whether the President is lying to further his militaristic ambitions, or truly believes that Hezbollah is nothing but the ‘Iranian Western Command’.
Watching his stuttering and fumbling attempts to explain how Israel really did win something in Lebanon, I was struck by the realization that the President really just ‘doesn’t get it’.
It must REALLY annoy President Bush to be forced to watch Hezbollah distribute Iranian money so copiously in southern Lebanon for relief/reconstruction.
Here is a link to an interesting analysis of Israel’s actions/options in the current conflict.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20173687-28737,00.html
Cheers,
Bob
Regarding the quote from Mr. Cordesmans paper:
“no serving Israeli official, intelligence officer, or other military officer felt that the Hezbollah acted under the direction of Iran or Syria.”
I think it is important to distinguish between the possible unwritten endings: ‘in all matters.’ or ‘in the abduction of the Israeli soldiers.’ or ‘in its response to Israel’s invasion.’, etc.
This uncertainty permeates the entire cloudy relationship between Hezbollah and Iran/Syria. Personally, I believe that Hezbollah is the sub-nationalist voice of the Lebanese Shiites, and as such, has a certain amount of legitimacy and political capital, much of which it squanders – whether by choice or necessity – through its terrorist acts and relationships with Iran and Syria.
So it is particularly bothersome to hear daily from President Bush and/or his closest advisors that Hezbollah is nothing more than a ‘terrorist tool of Iran’. I can’t tell whether he truly believes this, or if it is merely a necessary distortion to fit the rest of his anti-Iran rhetoric.
Once again we are forced to decide whether the President is lying to further his militaristic ambitions, or truly believes that Hezbollah is nothing but the ‘Iranian Western Command’.
Watching his stuttering and fumbling attempts to explain how Israel really did win something in Lebanon, I was struck by the realization that the President really just ‘doesn’t get it’.
It must REALLY annoy President Bush to be forced to watch Hezbollah distribute Iranian money so copiously in southern Lebanon for relief/reconstruction.
Here is a link to an interesting analysis of Israel’s actions/options in the current conflict.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20173687-28737,00.html
Cheers,
Bob
I missed the buried lead, and posted comments on the paper here.
I’m pressed for time, and will read your comments in the next day or two.
I missed the buried lead, and posted comments on the paper here.
I’m pressed for time, and will read your comments in the next day or two.
Cordesman advocated torture several years ago–the web address for this story is
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/110600-02.htm
I want to set aside for a moment that Cordesman’s paper doesn’t read as professionally as most of his other papers.
If you get twenty very sharp progressive bloggers into a room, they could probably come up with a list of 500 accurate things that are wrong about the Iraq War, Bush’s foreign policy and the Bush Administration’s various dysfunctions. But throw those 500 items at an average American who’s trying to understand what’s happening and their eyes will simply glaze.
Most people simply don’t have the time to follow the news and analysis as closely as many of us do on the blogs. I find myself having to think about things intelligent people I know can connect with if we start talking about these things. In general, I would rather throw at people 25 of the most useful things that they might be able to manage if I can carefully build the argument (I know, not always easy even at that level). I have always found Anthony Cordesman to be useful because, if you read him carefully, you can always find a handful of rock solid criticisms of the Bush Administration. Yes, he tends to soften his harshest criticisms but they’re often there, ready to use and build on.
I think we need liberals building that liberal argument with the 500 accurate items, etc., because it’s going to take years to fully turn this country around but I for one am more concerned about reaching Americans today. Pointing out, as a common example, that Donald Rumsfeld visited Saddam Hussein twenty years ago and treated him like an ally doesn’t impress many people, but showing people that even military analysts are saying that the Bush Administration has made a royal mess of Iraq is enough to make a lot of people pause.
I would like to know what exactly Bob meant by “terrorist acts” of Hizbollah? So many USA progressives seem casually repeating Israel-USA propaganda 🙁
About the “draft” – does somebody have something to say about “Israel video” with Hizbollah fighters entering a home, firing a missle and exitng? I was really pazzled by mention of such “proofs”
“Netcentric warfare” has been all the rage for over half a decade now.
Basically, it means that everybody is interconnected and that everybody from the Theater Commander back in the States to the lowest buck private in the field have the same “situational awareness.”
This universal awareness is accomplished by having everyone and everything from the individual soldier on the battlefield to the person back in a supply depot in the United States electronically connected.
Netcentric warfare is considered to be a “force multiplier.” This means that you can go to war and be victorious with fewer troops because you have complete situational awareness over your opponent and can almost instantly bring force to bear anywhere in the “battle space” because everybody is interconnected.
This is a ridiculous proposition. Each service has it’s own networks, it’s own protocols, and even at the most basic level, most of these systems are not compatible with each other. Does anybody recall when the DOD tried to make ADA the DOD-wide programing language?
It is important to understand this because it was one factor that lead to the debacle in Iraq. The DOD “deciders” apparently bought into this nonsense and I believe it is one reason they thought they could do with fewer troops on the ground.
They bought into the netcentric warfare force multiplier falderal.
In reality, netcentric warfare is a marketing buzzword that has sold the military establishment on a concept that generates a six to nine billion dollar a year market for what is essentially fancy wi-fi and internet gear that will immediately fail in a hostile battlefield environment. Does anybody recall the computer systems that were sold to government agencies in the 1970’s with promises that were way beyond the capabilities of the technology?
To be fair, there have been some successes, such as the Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below, or FBCB2, but this is a slow evolution, rather than a revolution, as some like think.
Hizbullah is netcentric, but without the fancy gadgets. They use cell phones, runners, and shout a lot to maintain situational awareness and control the battle space
For another interesting analysis of the Hezbollah behaviour during the war. I don’t know who is Le Moineau, but his position is interesting. Only analysing the news he states that Hezbollah’s strategy was to “retaliate” to the Israeli attacks tit for tat, but that they never escalated the war more than what the Israeli had done. That this was the main failure of the Israeli and an earthquake in the usual conflict : for the first time the Israeli lost the advantage to be the victime and that to be only “retaliating”. He then goes further, explaining that this strategy was possible due to the discipline and command control the Hezbollah was able to maintain on his troops. That the Israeli failed to disrupt their chain of command explains their loss of the war. I think it is quite convincing.
I have some questions and thoughts about the story of Hezbollah, and Iran link.
1- Both Iran and Hezbollah are marked as terrorist state and terrorist organization by US administration what actions taken by US against them both in real term?
2-Hamas also considered as terrorist organizations, after they win the election we saw US used all its power and influences to sanctioned pushing Hamas toward “collapse” or merely isolating it to the point of political impotence and bringing the democratically elected government down.
We saw EU countries stoped their aids, the Arab stats left their promises of helping the Palestinians government, all their aid money stoped, we saw most of the banks that Hamas using them stoped even they cancelled their accounts, they refused to hold any money belonging to them like Al-Arabi Bank in Jordan who have a long history of holding most of the Plasteins accounts around the worlds. We saw Israelis took a part during same time and they stopped and arrested Hamas member transporting USD 20,000 to Palestrina’s authority collected as donations from the Palestinian inside Israel.
In the end the Palestinian’s government have no cash to pay their employees and the Palestine’s start feel they are punished for voting for Hamas, which their right and they right in their thinking specially if we read this by Danielle Pletka when she said” The Palestinian people and their government have choices to make. They will live with the consequences of those choices. “
So back to Hezbollah, and Iran, what’s US administration did with all of the noises from different and many studies and media reports and media leaking about Hezbollah, and Iran?
Really nothing, Hezbollah starting paying money for the victims of the war, Hezbollah starting building road and bridges, Iran sending money to them and most of those US Think-Tanks believing and advising about Iran and Hezbollah links, so what happing here?
Is it really the link concerns US administration? Did they really care about this link? Did they plane any thing to break this link or at least make things hard?
Nothing happening of all of the above, this raises a big question mark, what’s this noise all about Hezbollah, and Iran link?
Who is targeted by this propaganda machine chewing this story again and again to the degree we felt this link very hard to break and to control. While US doing whatever she likes in the Arab land and with the regimes.
Just a questions no answers, but it’s really really let us think again and again what’s behind the written lines and what’s hidden behind those lines…..
I believe Salah is raising questions which have been raised and answered here
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060821fa_fact
which suggest that Israel was being used by the U.S. at least to measure the potential of a u.s. air campaign against Iran’s nuclear facilities while deteriorating Hezbollah’s retaliatory capabilities.
I find it interesting that Rumsfield opposed this plan and that Hilary Clinton AND Joe Lieberman have both chosen this (late) date to call for Rumsfield’s resignation.
Re. the goal of forcing a political change in Lebanon through bombing – isn’t this the definition of terrorism?
http://www.globalterrorism101.com/UTDefinition.html