(Being, a critique of Ron Tira’s The Limitations of Standoff
Firepower-Based Operations:On Standoff Warfare, Maneuver, and Decision)
Ron Tira is an Israeli Air Force reservist with considerable
experience
in the IAF’s intelligence and “Campaign Planning” departments. Last
November he published this scathing
critique of the way the Israeli ground forces had performed during
Israel’s 33-day war on Lebanon. (See my commentary on that, here.)
Now, in his latest study The
Limitations of Standoff Firepower-Based Operations, Tira has
turned his sights on many of the operational assumptions and concepts
developed with his own service, the Air Force. His critique is
very significant, it seems to me, for two reasons. First, it provides an IAF
insider’s informed insight into the flaws within the operational
concept that the IAF itself had done the most to develop within the
broader realm of Israeli military planning. The IAF’s former
chief Dan Halutz took the concept of relying very strongly on
“standoff, firepower-based operations” (SFO’s) with him when he became
the chief of the IDF’s entire, over-arching general staff structure;
and the 33-day war of last summer was Halutz’s great chance (!) to
demonstrate the efficacy of these types of operation.
And beyond that, as Tira makes clear throughout this latest study, the
Israeli concept of reliance on SFO’s is intimately– one might say,
organically– linked to many of the ideas and concepts developed within
the US military in recent years, including the ideas about the
possibility of relying on small but firepower-heavy forces capable of
operating over long distances that were strongly championed by Donald
Rumsfeld when he became Secreteary of Defense in 2001. (I
recently wrote here
about some of the terrible consequences– for both the US and
Iraq– of the Bush administration’s reliance on the small forces
dicated by that concept.)
So clearly, Tira’s critique of SFO’s has relevance and potential
resonance far beyond Israel’s immediate theater of operations. Hence,
the general nature of my title here.
A good proportion of the “boys”
in both the US and the Israeli armed services have clearly always been
enamored of high-tech gadgetry, and seduced by the idea that its
effective utilization could reduce their own forces’ casualties (and
perhaps, through the development of ‘precision guidance’ to the desired
level of ‘surgical’ precision, also reduce ‘collateral’ damage in the
areas targeted) while allowing them greater flexibility to operate
anywhere in the world they pleased and without all the messy,
time-consuming, and expensive business of having to plan for, move into
position, and then sustain in the field large numbers of the infantry’s
“boots on the ground”… But until Rumsfeld’s sharp-elbowed
arrival in the Pentagon, operational-art thinking there had still been
dominated by the basic tents of “the Powell Doctrine”: that is, a basic
reliance on large infantry forces (as built up over several decades in,
primarily, Central Europe), with all the strategic and political
constraints that reliance on such forces entails.
Rumsfeld worked rapidly and ruthlessly to bend the high command of the
US military to his will. The two great “experiments” of his
attempt to reconfigure US forces according to the new focus on what
Tira calls SFO’s, and to which US military jargon assigns a number of
other related terms (see p.11 of Tira’s work), were the invasions of
Afghanistan and Iraq. Significantly, when Tira tries to place the
performance of Israel’s SFO-focused campaign in Lebanon in 2006 into a
broader comparative context, in Ch.8 of this short work, the
comparisons he draws are with those two US campaigns and with the US’s
earlier SFO-based campaign in Kosovo, in 1999…
Like his government and perhaps most Israelis, Tira terms last summer’s
extremely lethal military assault on Lebanon the “Second” Lebanon war,
in a move that
neatly obliterates the considerable amounts of suffering the IDF
inflicted on Lebanon’s people through the large-scale assaults it made
on the country in 1978, 1993, 1996, and indeed in other years,
too. In Chs. 3 and 4, he makes clear that what Israel aimed
at last summer was the “cognitive collapse” or “cognitive-strategic
collapse” of the enemy it identified there, that is (as I read him) the
Hizbullah leadership. In little graphics that he uses on pp.23
and 27 of the study, he defines the “Required military achievement” as
being “Removing surface-to-surface rocket threat”; and specifies that
the planners hoped to achieve this by causing a “Cognitive-strategic
collapse of Hizbollah system” that would lead to “Behavioral change” by
Hizbollah.
(This already leads to some very interesting questions. If the
IDF was seeking “behavior change” by Hizbollah, how on earth were they
hoping to achieve this at the same time they were– as they very
evidently and avowedly seemed to be– aggressively working for the physical elimination of
Hizbollah’s top leadership? If the IDF had indeed succeeded in
killing Sayed Hassan Nasrallah and his circle of top aides, who did
they think could issue any credible order to dismantle Hizbollah’s
rocket-launcher arrays? Indeed, was it really “behavior change”
they were aiming at– or rather, the physical destruction of
Hizbullah’s entire decision-making and command-and-control system?)
I shall also note but not dwell on the poor grasp Tira seems to have of the
nature of Israel’s 1982 war against Lebanon. In the graphic on
p.23, he shows that he seems to think the strategic goal of Israel’s
1982 war on Lebanon was also (as in 2007) “Remocing surface-to-surface
rocket threat”. What on earth is he talking about there?
The strategic goal of the principal architect of that war, Ariel
Sharon, was the destruction and/or complete removal from Lebanon of the
PLO’s entire decision-making and command-and-control system, which
until then had been headquartered in Beirut. The PLO had almost
no rockets in South Lebanon at the time– and certainly none capable of
leaping overt the UNIFIL zone and detonating inside Israel
proper. The main physical irritant that the PLO deployed against
Israel was the series of intermittent incursions its fighters launched,
either by land or by sea. But it was the political challange the
PLO leadership posed that Sharon probably judged to be the greater
threat to his dream of settling Jewish Israelis in all of occupied
Palestine; and to defuse that threat, the PLO’s leaders in Beirut had
to be very visibly humiliated, punished, and sent into an ignominious
exile, if not killed… Also, contrary to what Tira indicates in
Ch.3, the attainment of Sharon’s goal in Lebanon in 1982 was not a
rapid and decisive business. The PLO and its local allies rapidly
fell back to West Beirut; but there, they dug in and for 5-6 weeks
sustained a very effective defense against the IDF– and this, despite
the IDF’s use of massive firepower against them– until finally, in
early August 1982 both sides agreed to ceasefire. Sharon was then
forced to stand by near the Beirut docks while Yasser Arafat and his
men sailed out of Beirut very badly bloodied but with their
organization’s structure and its political line still intact…
(And the Palestinians’ resistance to Israel’s colonial-settlement
projects in occupied Palestine have only continued, and taken on many
new forms since then.)
Anyway, as I said, I shan’t dwell on Tira’s poor understanding of that
history, which does not, as I see it, substantially dent the force of
his critique of the IDF’s performance last summer. Neither does
the slightly confused way in which he refers to the goals being
fought for in Israel’s various wars as being “military
achievements”. No, surely what is being fought for in all these
cases (using military means) is a strategic-political achievement,
whether that is is destruction, dismantling, or incapacitation of a
perceived threat, or something slightly less palpable like “restoring
the credibility of Israel’s strategic deterrent.” Indeed, in the
Lebanon war, both those goals were actively sought, as I had noted here.
In the graphic on p.27 he shows the contrast between the way the IDF’s
SFO’s were supposed to work during the 33-day war and the way they had
worked on the Egyptian front in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. His
choice of the 1973 war was interesting, since once the first few days
of reacting to the “strategic surprise” that the Egyptian and
Syrian offensives achieved were over, and the IDF had been able to
stabilize its positions inside occupied Sinai, the principal war aim
that Ariel Sharon, then the commander of that front, sought to achieve
was– as in Lebanon in 2007– to restore the credibility of Israel’s
strategic deterrent primarily by inflicting harsh punishment on
the actor who had previously been daring enough not to be totally
deterred by Israel’s preceding strategic posture. In
Egypt, there were geostrategic limits on how harsh that punishment
could be. The Americans were probably very happy to see Sadat’s
regime and his generals taken down a large peg or three; but they did
not want to see Egypt’s military collapse leading to a complete
collapse of his regime in Cairo. (Nonetheless, Sharon wanted it
to be as harsh as possible, and he pushed his forces foward to complete
the encirclement of the Egyptian Third Army even after the deadline
agreed for the ceasefire.)
In Lebanon in 2006, there were no such geostrategic constraints on Israel’s ability to “”punish” its enemy (which made its failure to achieve that goal even more galling for most Israelis.
There were also a couple of other notable differences between Sharon’s war in
Egypt in 1973 and Halutz’s war in Lebanon 33 years later. In
1973, Sharon and a number of other key Israeli commanders were forced
to think rapidly and effectively on their feet, once the fact and scale
of the Egyptian-Syrian military project became clear to them..
(Also, a portion of the IDF general staff underwent functional collapse
in response to the surprise; so Sharon and other field commanders were
to a large extent left to improvise.) In July 2006, by contrast,
Halutz pulled off the shelf– with apparently almost zero last-minute
adaptation– a strategic plan that he had long been perfecting.
Its goal was to teach not just Hizbullah but also anyone else who might
dare to mess with Israel a huge and effective lesson– and to do this
solely through the use of SFOs. He was not improvising.
Indeed, one point Tira makes is that Halutz showed himself almost
incapable of introducing any adaptations into his plan at all..
When the ferocious and very destructive bombardment that Halutz
unleashed on Lebanon in the first few days of the war failed to result in
Hizbullah’s “cognitive-strategic collapse” and in the suppression of
the organization’s continued rocket attacks against northern Israel,
then all Halutz showed himself capable of doing was “more, and then yet
more, of the same”– until, as Tira notes, no-one in the IDF could even
think of any additional targets in Lebanon to bomb.
Another key difference between Sharon’s operation in Egypt in 1973 and
Halutz’s in Lebanon was, of course, that Sharon was operating mainly
with ground forces, and in sizeable numbers. Once mustered on an
emergency basis these ground forces were able to rely on years of good
training and were thus rapidly able to become effective in the
field. Whereas in Lebanon, after Halutz eventuially became
convinced that his airpower-based SFO’s were not working and he needed
to use some ground troops as well, he could not find any that were in
any condition at all to be effective in the field.
Just how ferocious was the totality of Halutz’s bombardment of
Lebanon? On p.44, Tira quantifies it thus:
shells,
15,000 sorties (including 7,000 strike sorties), 1,800 rockets carrying
hundreds of thousands of small bombs [that is, cluster-bomb units], and
8,000 sailing hours, including 2,500 offshore bombardments
Imagine the cost of all that destructive power– to Israel.
And
then, of course, we all have a fairly clear idea of the cost that using
all those very lethal and expensive “toys” imposed on the people of
Lebanon…
And what did this huge assault achieve in terms of destroying
Hizbullah-related targets in Lebanon? Tira tells us that it
several dozen high quality targets [though I’d love to see his
definition of those– I’m assuming he didn’t mean anything as mundane
as Lebanon’s vital bridges, roadways, hospitals, schools, apartment
building, etc… ] and the death of 200-400 Hizbollah
fighters (excluding Hizbollah personnel killed in ground battles).
So what strategic outcome did these SFO’s achieve? Tira writes
which was planned in advance to withstand SFO and therefore made
Israeli fire less effective, Israel
failed on the
strategic, operational, and tactical levels. Israel did not
[succeed] in generating decapitation, paralysis, blindness, or any
other effect that substantially harms the will or functioning of the
organization’s command and control echelon. Nor did it succeed in
suppressing the operational effectiveness of Hizbollah’s combat groups
and light surface-to-surface rocket formations. At the end of the day,
Israel did not upset the equilibrium of Hizbollah’s system and did not
create a sense of helplessness and distress, nor did it push the
organization towards cognitive-strategic collapse and a drive to end
the war immediately on Israel’s terms.
.. Well, there are many aspects of Tira’s analysis that are worth
engaging seriously with. In general, I think he provides an extremely
well informed asnd well argued critique of the idea that SFO’s alone
can assure the achievement of substantial strategic objectives.
He does provide a fairly strong critique of the claim that some have
made to the effect that in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the US military’s
reliance on SFO’s brought worthwhile results.
But what I really want to focus on right now is the epistemological
dimension of the argument Tira makes about the limitations on the
effectiveness of SFO’s.
Of course, given that the goal of these operations is to bring about
the “cognitive-strategic collapse” of the enemy, the epistemology of
all aspects of how
this is to be achieved are very important.
Ch.5 of his work deals centrally with this issue. The chapter
starts thus:
behavioral-cognitive effect on the enemy following the destruction of
targets becomes more complicated the higher the rank and seniority of
the enemy that is engaged, as the enemy’s systems become more complex
and its set of interests and considerations more extensive. This
complexity is greatest when the desired effect is aimed not at the
military system but at the political level. The effect on the enemy’s
political echelons becomes particularly elusive when the enemy’s
mentality, culture, economy, and society are different from one’s own,
or when the enemy acts
emotionally, errs, or just does not understand the wider picture of the
war. Moreover, in many cases the enemy might act irrationally, or at
least irrationally in relation to one’s own projections.
I have to say, I found those ascriptions of emotionality, error,
misunderstanding, or a lack of rationality quite hilarious. What
the heck is he talking about there?? The idea that Lebanese
people don’t like seeing their country bombed from the air, their
people killed and maimed by the score, and their vital infrastructure
very badly damaged, and might be angry with the people who have
launched that bombardment– and this is “emotionality, error,
misunderstanding, or irraltionality”??
Ummm, just who might be in “error” in this whole discussion??
So what does Tira mean by “rationality”, anyway? In the next
paragraph he argues clearly that, from a strictly cost/benefit
viewpoint, the “rational” way for the North Vietnamese to respond to
the huge bombardments the US launched against their country from 1965
through 1968 under Operation Rolling Thunder would have been to bow to
Uncle Sam’s demands. “However, North Vietnam acted in an ‘irrational’
manner and continued to support the Vietcong, despite the severe
escalation and the destruction of its political and industrial
infrastructures.”
My goodness, how very “primitive, emotional, and irrational” of them!
(Irony alert from me there.)
What’s more, he notes that it is not only in low-income, undemocratic
countries that such a seemingly “irrational” attachment to the values
of national dignity and the independence of national decision-making
are found… He notes (as I did, back last summer) that this same
strong nationalist push-back against outsiders who are bombing the
bejeesus out of your country was also present in the response of
Londoners to the Blitz. Tira doesn’t, in fact, accuse the Brits
of being “emotional or irrational”– he probably reserves such
sobriquets for people from non-western countries– but he was right to
note that the stubborn sense of nationalist pride and push-back was
certainly present there, as well.
I think the most important portion of Tira’s study is Ch. 6, because it
is there that he comes closest to concluding that SFO’s are inherently
incapable of being waged, even in their own terms, and therefore no
amount of tweaking of the concept would be capable of making them
strategically effective.
He starts the chapter thus:
Operations and, in particular, Effects-Based Operations, are complex
and difficult to manage and command. First, the discipline in itself is
complicated, reading and understanding the orders is at times an
exhausting task, and the terminology used – either by choice or due to
the nature of the subject matter – is not necessarily accessible to the
numerous officers who are supposed to carry out the orders. Second, the
sometimes abstract nature of the required military achievement leads to
communications lapses within the military chain of command and
difficulty in monitoring the advance toward the realization of
non-physical effects. The simple and straightforward commands of the
past are replaced by ambiguous complex formats that are open to
interpretation.
When, for example, there is an order to create “a sense of being
pursued,” it is not self-evident what steps the subordinates are to
take, or in SFO terms, where to aim the sensor and at what targets the
shooter should fire so that the enemy feels pursued. Moreover, tasks
with a cognitive objective involve difficulty in evaluating progress
and success in carrying out the mission. In classic warfare the
commander sets measurable interim objectives that allow assessment of
progress and success (for example, the campaign objective is to reach
line x, whereby the interim objective of the next 24 hours is to reach
line y). However, in cognitive effects-based operations it is hard to
set milestones for assessing success, as the interim effects cannot
generally be assessed; nor is it possible to define in percentages
progress toward attaining a cognitive effect or the expected behavioral
change…
I find that reference to an order to “create a sense of being
pursued” interesting. Was that in fact the wording of one of the
orders issued by Halutz to his subordinates? Just to create that
sense– in, presumably, Hassan Nasrallah– and thereby drive him to the
point of accepting Israel’s demands? Or rather, actually to
pursue him?
Anyway, Tira tells us (pp.34-35) that during Halutz’s bombardment of
Lebanon,
to assess whether or not the IDF was successful and at what levels to
determine success or failure (there are those who say this very
question of success or failure is still unclear, even today). It is
possible that this is one of the reasons why the IDF modus operandi was not
changed during the war despite the deep-seated feeling shared by many
that the campaign themes were not bearing fruit. After a week or
two, after 3,000 sorties and 30,000 artillery shells, it was possible
to stop and reexamine the practicality of the campaign themes and the
need to change them. However, the consensus of the General Staff was
that the train was progressing at full steam, and another bombardment
and another shelling would bring Hizbollah nearer to
cognitive-strategic collapse…
So in other words, all that Halutz knew how to do was to carry on doing
what he had been been doing. That is, bombing.
Tira then argues that,
in
relation to an order to generate an effect such as “weakening
Hizbollah.” First, it is not clear where the sensor should be pointed
and at what targets the shooter should aim in order to weaken Hizbollah
(and in the broader context to assess if Hizbollah is at all weakened,
or has actually gained
strength in the Lebanese political system during
the SFO campaign against it). Second, it is difficult to gauge
progress during the fighting as to realization of the order,
in other words, estimating how much Hizbollah was weakened after one
week or two weeks, and when to declare that Israel has achieved
sufficient success.
He was, of course, quite right to put that parenthetical possibility in
there, since from the second week of the fighting onward, Hizbullah’s
political position in the Lebanese system did indeed get stronger with
every day that Israel continued to bomb Lebanon while Hizbullah showed
itself capable of withstanding that onslaught.
And then, he produces this important argument (pp.35-36):
somewhat contradictory. On the one hand, the basic guideline of
intelligence and SFO management is total awareness of the situation on
the battlefield (dominant battlespace awareness). On the other hand,
the basic principles of force utilization include damaging the enemy’s
communications networks and making its system “incoherent.” [I’m assuming that by that he means
“indecipherable to and uncontrollable by the enemy’s top leadership”,
rather than simply “indecipherable to anyone, in general.”] Yet
when the enemy’s known communications networks are damaged, it is
impelled to use improvised alternative methods of communication and
even create communications redundancy in advance. In such
circumstances, dominant battlespace awareness is harmed, which
compromises the ability to fight the enemy as a system efficiently. Not
surprisingly, most armies in the past chose not to damage the enemy’s
known communications systems, so that it would continue to use them and
continue to allow obtaining quality intelligence. Similarly, inflicting
damage on the enemy’s system-of-systems and making it “incoherent” [to “their”side’s leadership] is
liable to make the enemy unpredictable [to “our” side] and blur the
battlefield.
Actually, I would say it would render the battlefield significantly
unreadable… So there you have it: seemingly a very serious internal
contradiction lying at the heart of the whole idea of SFO’s.
Regarding the above, I can note that using multiply redundant and low-
or no-visibility means of internal communication and having a very
“flat”, distributed command structure were precisely some of the means
that Hizbullah– a very adaptive and learning-focused fighting
organization– had developed throughout its 20 years of confronting the
IOF on the Lebanese battlefield that is also, after all, Hizbullah’s own, much loved and intimately known home
turf. (In addition, even if Hizbullah itself didn’t have much of
an electronic signature for its own battlefield communications, it had
reportedly developed some fairly innovative ways of tapping into the
Israeli forces’ massive digital footprint– so at some points,
especially when the Israelis started sending in large bnumbers of
ground troops in the last days of the war, the Hizbullah commanders
seemed more aware of what the Israelis were up to than vice
versa. Tira alludes to Hizbullah’s capabilities in that regard,
without giving away any details.)
In Ch.8, Tira describes the thinking behind the concept of
“Effects-Based Operations” (EBOs), which he defines elsewhere as
constituting the particular kind of SFOs that Halutz was trying to
carry out in Lebanon. On pp.43-44 he writes,
developers of the EBO concept say there are three prerequisites for its
use: first, the enemy is organized like a system; second, the enemy’s
system has critical vulnerability nodes; and third, those ready to
launch the effects-based operations are familiar with these nodes.
While Hizbollah is based on a systemic structure, the second and third
conditions are not sufficiently extant: on the one hand, Hizbollah has
a flat, decentralized structure that incorporates a network of
autonomous cells with high redundancy. On the other hand, it has almost no clear
vulnerability nodes or an operational center of gravity whose
destruction would bring about the collapse of the other branches.
Well, goodness, what on earth can an EBO planner do when faced with
such an organization!
Ch.9 is devoted to considering the responses that a range of potential
enemies may resort to as they face Israel’s SFOs. He notes (p.53)
that,
asymmetric, will find the weak points in SFO. Ironically, the battle
format designed to combat systems and their vulnerability nodes is
itself a system with vulnerability nodes.
I don’t know why he terms this “ironic”? In fact it is, as he
goes on to note, one of the major weaknesses of the whole SFO
concept. He adds,
balanced military force with varied capabilities to a military force
that emphasizes standoff fire makes it easier for the enemy to
understand the relatively one-dimensional nature of the threat with
which it has to contend and to deal with it accordingly (once again, in
contrast with the declared intention of SFO to move from a linear
threat to a simultaneous and multidimensional threat). If the enemy
clearly perceives that what it is likely to face is largely a system of
electro-optic sensors and attack by GPS-guided and electro-optic
weaponry, the enemy will already find the appropriate countering means.
However, when the enemy is faced with a balanced and diverse adversary
endowed with versatile and dynamic capabilities, the solution required
of it is far more complex….
At this point, the strategic-policy prescriptions that Tira favors are
becoming quite clear. And indeed, in the
concluding chapter he argues strongly that Israel should reverse its
headlong rush into the beguiling arms of SFOs and return to a more
balanced and flexible concept that also allows for a succesful
integration of ground force actions with (a modicum of) SFOs.
Here’s his concluding paragraph (pp.66-67):
change and adopt innovative ideas gradually, and only after
experimenting with them and proving them on the battlefield. The risk
involved in building a force and designing its operational concept
based exclusively on an unproven theory that may well prove to be incorrect
is enormous. Discarding classic fighting capabilities is a dramatic
process that cannot be reversed in any relevant timeframe, and thus it
must not be pursued prematurely. No
one knows what the future holds and thus when we posit how we should
prepare for the battlefield of tomorrow, … caution and modesty are
required. Evolution rather
than revolution in military affairs is the order of the day.
The problem that Tira notably does not address, however, is the huge cost of what he is proposing–
both in cash terms, but even more so in terms of the manpower burden it
will continue to impose on Israel’s small society. The Israeli
military is already deploying scores of thousand– perhaps more than
100,000?– of its personnel in and around the occupied territories on a
more or less continuing basis, with little reduction in the size of
that deployment anywhere in sight. After the debacle of the
ground forces’ horrendous unreadiness was revealed for all to see last
summer, I imagine that the general staff has done something to restore
the kinds of training cycles that in earlier decades kept the ground
forces at an appropriately high level of readiness. But the
general staff has also committed itself to maintaining (or rather
restroing) a high level of very high-end SFO capabilities. All
this requires a huge commitment of money and time. And the time
in question is primarily that of the country’s non-volunteer soldiery–
the 18-year-old males who have to do their 36 months of military
service, the females who have to do 24 months, and all the older men
called back into doing reserve duty (whether training, or doing very
onerous policing duties in the West Bank) until the age of 41 or,
depending on the specialization until 54…
It was precisely that horrible burden on the lives of the country’s
young people, families, and small businesses that the shift to SFOs was
meant to ease. But to carry on policing the West Bank, plus
maintaining a large and combat-ready ground force, plus continuing to
invest in SFOs?? I just don’t see that Israelis will be ready to
do that for very much longer…
However, at the level of the broader debate within “western” societies
over the effectiveness of SFOs, I think Tira’s study has made a real
contribution.
Of course, here in the US, there has already been a strong and still
growing understanding that the “lean, mobile, hi-tech” force championed
by Donald Rumsfeld has not been effective at all in bringing about–
especially in Iraq!– on a lasting and stable basis the
large-scale strategic shift that he promised for it. Hence we
have seen the Bush administration’s hasty (and completely doomed) rush
to increase the size of the ground-force deployment in Iraq. And
we have already seen the proposals and plans, subscribed to by leading
Democratic politicians just as much as by Republicans, to increase the
overall size of the US’s standing military by 92,000 or even 100,000
people.
Increasing the US’s military to that degree will similarly impose a
huge additional burden on the US citizenry; and certainly I intend to
do some hard-hitting analysis of all these proposals in the very near
future. (Given the time it will take to fund and build these additional
forces, they will come online far too late to make any appreciable
difference to the situation in Iraq, which is going downhill for the US
suide very fast, even as I write this. But might some Americans
hope this new force could do make a good contribution in Afghanistan,
or elsewhere? I very much doubt that– particularly if these new
forces are trained in line with the same kind of extremely aggressive
fighting concepts that the US military has adhered to up until now; and
particularly if the US still plans to retain the same degree of
operational independence it hangs on to today for most of the forces it
has in Afghanistan, from any form of multilateral command and
control… )
But that discussion on the effectiveness and general utility of large,
ground-force-based militaries is for another day. For now, it is
just great to be able to take account of the critique that this very
well informed Israeli Air Force insider has provided of the inutility,
or even disutility of Standoff Firepower-based Operations.
Please! Let the little boys of the world put all their high-tech,
gee-whiz fighting toys back into their sheaths. (Or could we
perhaps transform some of them into socially useful plowshares?)
And then, the rest of us– the adults of the world– can get together
and start designing a security structure for all the peoples of the
world that does not depend on anyone waving around, or threatening to
use, or even using all these extremely harmful weapons of large-scale
destruction.
Two things strike me about this interesting essay: (1) the connection between war and sex, from the Western male perspective, and (2) the extent to which Power Point summaries have replaced actual experience-based learning, analysis and planning within the military/political/industrial complex. The basic fallacy of the SFO doctrines is the assumption that the “enemy” (in the role of the opposite sex) is playing the same game.
WOW! Four entries in a row where hateful Helena goes after Israel or those affiliated it. She can really get on a roll sometimes!
But of course, she’s the “adult” dealing with those “childish” Israeli and Americans who are concerned with actually ensuing that their enemies can’t kill them.
Do you think the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah are adults or children, Helena?
Israel should reduce the IDF’s pace of change and adopt innovative ideas gradually, and only after experimenting with them and proving them on the battlefield.
He makes it sound as if the IDF has plans to make many more wars in future.
The other problem with experimenting and proving ideas on the battlefield is that you give the opposition a chance to develop counter-measures and that is something that Hezbollah has proved very adept at. So it comes down to which side can cycle through John Boyd’s OODA loop fastest and I would still put my money on Hezbollah.
Of course, for those who envisage their nation’s armed forces being used on a legitimate moral basis, none of the above is a particular problem.
High tech standoff firepower-based systems are excellent for destroying relatively lower tech massed armed forces, and particularly if they attempt offensive operations. I want my government to have such systems in case of a recurrence of a potential threat such as the Soviet Union. To deal with a more powerful potential enemy such as the US, I want my government to make provision for the kind of militia-based anti-occupation defence so successfully exemplified by Hezbollah. And I want my government to have a sufficient nuclear-armed missile force (the ultimate standoff firepower-based system), with second strike capability, to deter attacks and preclude nuclear blackmail.
However, none of the above systems lend themselves greatly to the kind of aggression that the regimes in my country and the US have abused my country’s armed forces for in recent years – Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, shortly Iran.
So I’m all in favour of building a standoff firepower based military, although it needs to be kept small enough so that my contemptible “leaders” are no longer tempted to misuse it for murderous interference in other nations’ affairs.
“Let the little boys of the world put all their high-tech, gee-whiz fighting toys back into their sheaths.”
Noted for future use next time Helena complains of sexism in some other person’s commentary 🙂
(I’m not objecting to it, per se – I have no particular problem with sexism, myself.)
If I wish informed debate about the Middle East, I don’t read the local newspapers nor do I seek out the comments of persons such as Joshua who, rather than presenting an argument, resorts to name-calling.
I read your web site to be informed, and I am, generally. Please spare us the comments of Joshua! I have enough in my life that irritates me.
Very frequently, Alan, Joshua doesn’t know how to do anything else except name-call. By just calling me “hateful” as he does so frequently instead of engaging with the subject of the posts he indicates that he hasn’t even really read these posts closely, and far less is he able to engage in any serious way with the topics discussed.
Sometimes I keep his comments in just to indicate the jejune level of the discourse of knee-jerk Israel-uber-Alles folks like him. Sometimes I keep them in because he expresses arguments that are common out there in the general US discourse so this gives me a chance to engage with those arguments. Sometimes I don’t keep them in.
But you’re right, they do very frequently interrupt the flow of serious, substantial discussion here.
Joshua’s comments are ‘jejune’, ‘knee-jerk’, reflect an ‘Israel uber alles’ mentality.. and he’s the name caller? Helena, you’d do better to simply delete his comments than talking over his head with condescending slurs.
Such a great article that I feel foolish asking the following:
You use the term “shan’t”: would you comment on your understanding of the shall/will distinction?
Sounds like these guys went to business school rather than staff college. EBOs? Cognitive objectives? No wonder they messed up 🙂
Typical Helena. Ignore the fact that her vindictiveness, and her false comparisons have been exposed. Then turn it into a personal attack.
Joshua, how do you expect anyone here to respect you when you keep reverting to abhorrant behavior like writing “hateful Helena”?
Parallels between Israel and the USA:
Colonial occupations that are straining existing military resources
Fighting wars on the cheap
Ethnic cleansing another people
Leaders lying to themselves and their citizens
Posted by: Joshua
You do know what she refers to when she says “Israel Uber Alles” don’t you?
Reagan diaries reveal president’s private musings
What a “Terrorist State” Israel is…..
***Please endorse our petition and forward widely***
War Is a Racket!
In the words of a USMC General, war is the oldest, the most profitable and the most vicious racket—one in which the profits are measured in dollars and the losses in body bags.
Full text available at: http://tinyurl.com/2pammb
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“As far as Israel is concerned, it would be difficult to imagine a more convenient scenario. Its stubborn enemies, Iran and Syria, are now being accused by the international community, one for its nuclear program, the other for its behavior in Lebanon… Israel has hoped for this outcome since the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States in 2001. Immediately after the collapse of the Twin Towers, Israeli officials began to speak about the anticipated change, and expressed a hope that the United States would bring order to the region, and would deal with Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and not only Iraq.”
-Aluf Benn, Haaretz, October 25, 2005
The Salvador Option in Beirut
Now will Helena delete Salah’s posts for being off-topic hateful rants? Or will she demonstrate her double standards once again?
Salah, do you have a point in all this? Or do you just try to find every negative quote you can about Israel. I suppose we can’t blame you. This blog does encourage such misanthropy.
Joshua
I suppose we can’t blame you.
I post what’s comes from Israelis mouths,
Don’t blame me blame them
Yes Salah, and I could simply post memri translations of the virulent racism that comes through the Arab media every day. Or go back and post all of the arrogant belligerent and genocidal rhetoric of Nasser and his ilk on the eve of the 67 war. Or post links documenting the Mufti of Jerusalem’s links with the Nazi party. Of course, someone may decide to delete that as “off topic” (yet quotes from a Reagan bio are somehow on topic, how strange). But I don’t do it anyway, since I don’t see how it proves or accomplishes anyway.
We know you have a pathological hatred toward Israel. You don’t need to go trawling through the internet to find quotes to demonstrate that.
We know you have a pathological hatred
You speak about yourself obviously no doubt about that just go after all your posts and read them carefully to discover what your character instead of paint others.
Israel a state no need to say what is the Stat of Israel, although it’s your lover but here behaviours in the region for the past 50+ tells more about what’s this state doing.
Unless State of Israel respect others in the region, treats them equally as a countries and as a nation without denying their total rights from a Holly land and their occupied land to have their advance technology and development in all field of life, then Israel will never gaining any sympathy or respects of dissent minded people.
When that happens?
Don’t bother to reply to this I will not read it.
My apologies to Helena, our friends for this out of topic, this is the last post in this regards.
An interview with Alison Weir of If Americans Knew. Producers: Paul Chek and John Odam (2006)
Is she also telling laies or she “have a pathological hatred?
Reminder: the topic here is:
“Hi-tech war ‘toys’– what are they good for?”
This is a really important topic, not least because it affects so much else that is happening in today’s Middle East.
Until now, the voting publics in both the US and Israel (and perhaps also other countries– including various oil-rich countries around the world?) have been seduced by the idea that possession of such ulttra-lethal gizmos can allow their nations to fight and win wars in ways that do NOT involve putting any significant numbers of their own side’s soldiers in harm’s way, or indeed keeping large numbers of their own side’s young people in a battle-ready condition, at all. Another, ancillary “promise” of these weapons was that they would enable these nations to fight and win these wars in ways that reduced almost to zero the number of “other side” noncombatants who would be killed or wounded, thus allowing these wars to be considered to be extremely “humanitarian”.
It turns out, though– and Tira gives us some very helpful analysis on this– that these promises are quite false. These high-tech gizmos do not guarantee that a military “victory” can be won in a way that puts very few of “our” soldiers at risk and that minimizes damage to noncombatants.
Indeed, we have also seen these lessons more than amply demonstrated by the four-year-long sequelae of Rumsfeld’s military “experiments” with them in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Tira’s piece, it seems to me, is an essential piece of evidence in any solidly convincing argument we want to build to the effect that “War is not the answer” to any of the world’s ills.
(Back in the 1990s, remember, many members even of the international “human-rights” movement would energetically argue that things like “precision-guided [!] missiles” could allow for “clean” victories against Serbia and therefore make a military attack against Serbia seem like quite a “humanitarian” and effective response to Serbia’s large-scale rights abuses in Kosovo…)
Anyway, let’s keep this discussion on-topic from here on. As I said, it’s an important topic.
He does provide a fairly strong critique of the claim that some have made to the effect that in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the US military’s reliance on SFO’s brought worthwhile results.
Tira’s critique of the US’ performance in Afghanistan is confined to Operation Anaconda. There he expressly notes the value of precision weapons used in combination with ground forces. Nowhere does he challenge that the results of that war as a whole have been worthwhile.
Thanks for the correction, Vadim. You’re quite right. Tira specifically writes that in Anaconda it was the combination of SFOs and ground forces that allowed what he considered to be a successful battle there. My own evaluation of the results of Anaconda– as I noted above– was considerably less positive; and of the effectiveness of the broader US war effort in Afghanistan, more negative still.
So I was perhaps wrong to attribute to Tira the judgment that reliance on SFOs in Afghanistan had failed to bring worthwhile results– though the idea of “reliance” on them (and thus, by implication, an exclusive reliance on them) is a key part of this whole discussion.
Where I agree with Tira is in his well-substantiated conclusion that exclusive reliance on SFOs cannot assuredly bring about achievable victories. Where I disagree with him is in the judgment that use of SFOs in conjunction with use of more traditional massed ground forces can bring achievable victories: he supports that judgment, while I for the reasons stated above don’t. So I was wrong if I seemed to attribute to him concurrence in my judgment on that score, and in my judgment on the outcome to date of the broader US war effort in Afghanistan.
Thank you for the clarification Helena. But has the war in Afghanistan been exclusively a “US effort?” Although most of the troops there are from the US, 47 other countries are also represented, including Switzerland.
Re: “more negative still.” I recognize that the military effort there hasn’t yielded perfect results. But it would be hard to argue that unuseating the repressive Taliban government (with accompanying declines in child mortality, significant improvements in health care, nutrition, education etc) represents a “negative” compared to the status quo ante bellum.
My understanding is that there are at least two separate and very different non-Afghan campaigns being waged inside Afghanistan these days. One is an area-stabilization campaign being waged in some provinces by NATO’s UN-sanctioned ISAF force (10,000-plus troops). The other is the much more free-wheeling and pugilistic campaign being waged in various areas by the US’s ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ force (= 17,000 US forces and 2,000 non-US.) Five-plus years after the US’s invasion of Afghanistan vast areas of the country still remain mired in insecurity and deep conflict.
Yes, there have been some reported inmprovements since 2001 in such factors of wellbeing as the ones you mention, though the documentation on this is extremely spotty and the Taliban did manage to deliver some degree of basic services, including crucially a degree of public security (albeit on a highly gender-specific basis.)
The current situation in Afghanistan certainly cannot be described as a strategic success for the US and its allies– or, for the human security of the Afghan people. As in Iraq, the rampant lack of public security threatens every aspect of the human security of the people in Afghanistan’s many vast strife-riddled areas. See e.g. this very recent report on food insecurity (hunger) in the country… And this, remember, is after more than five years of the US-led regimen there.
Regarding future prospects, it is seriously doubtful whether there is anything the present configuration of foreign and national forces can do to help Afghanistan’s people regain the broad public security they so desperately need. But already, if we draw up a balance-sheet on five-plus years of the US-dominated regime in the country, I think we’d have to say it has not delivered the kind of basic human services that a serious commitment to sociopolitical reconstruction of the country should have delivered by now. (As in, post-1945 Germany or Japan…. )
Would the better approach have been more US boots on the ground? Perhaps that would have been better than the present situation, though probably still not optimal. Having a much more solidly international commitment to rebuilding Afghanistan, and doing so without all those hi-tech, standoff weapons-based US strike forces rushing uncontrollably around the country, would have been better yet. Meanwhile, with or without a 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, relying on a combination of expert police work and finding effective ways to build the human security of the people of the Afghan-Pakistan border would surely have been a more effective way to incapacitate and then unroll the threat from Al-Qaeda, which was after all the prime “target” in 2001. But because of the Bushites’ reliance on pugilism and hi-tech standoff weapons in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the threat from Al-Qaeda has not only remained active but has grown.
Dr. Cobban’s post of 10:41 4 May seems to invite an “obvious” compromise position that I doubt she would actually much care for. In both Afganistan and Iraq one might conclude that high-tech whizbangs worked admirably to get rid of the ancien régime but were close to useless when it came to replacing it with anything else in particular.
“Creative destruction,” yes. Real positive creation? Not much sign of that!
JHM, I actually do agree with the conclusion you state briefly there. In these two cases (but notably not in Lebanon last summer) the almost exclusive reliance on whizbangs did achieve the sought-for overthrow of the previously existing order. But the broader thrust of my argument is that, even when they achieve that, use of the whizbangs on their own cannot either bring about the installation of a stable and sustainable better order or guarantee the whizbangs’ non-harming of noncombatants.
Meanwhile, since Hizbullah showed its forces (and leadership) capable of withstanding the whizbangs last summer, you can bet that numerous other states or parties that fear they might be a target of similar attacks in the future have taken good note. Actually, a close reading of Ron Tira’s work provides a rather good summary of the lessons that can be learned by such actors.
“Until now, the voting publics in both the US and Israel (and perhaps also other countries– including various oil-rich countries around the world?) have been seduced by the idea that possession of such ulttra-lethal gizmos can allow their nations to fight and win wars in ways that do NOT involve putting any significant numbers of their own side’s soldiers in harm’s way, or indeed keeping large numbers of their own side’s young people in a battle-ready condition, at all. Another, ancillary “promise” of these weapons was that they would enable these nations to fight and win these wars in ways that reduced almost to zero the number of “other side” noncombatants who would be killed or wounded, thus allowing these wars to be considered to be extremely “humanitarian”.
It turns out, though– and Tira gives us some very helpful analysis on this– that these promises are quite false. These high-tech gizmos do not guarantee that a military “victory” can be won in a way that puts very few of “our” soldiers at risk and that minimizes damage to noncombatants.”
This is misleading, I think.
The “high tech gizmos” do, in fact, guarantee a relatively bloodless (for the owners of said gizmos) victory in the kind of wars most people actually think their “defence” budgets are for (ie actual defensive wars against military aggressors). Those are the occasions when success really matters. The problems Tira and Helena highlight stem primarily from the attempt to use them in wars of aggression such as Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. The argument that these systems can be useful in such circumstances (mainly in supposedly reducing collateral damage through “precision targeting”) was always only ever a “bolt on” addition to their advocates’ sales pitch, in response to US and Israeli military dominance and the consequential absence of any credible threat to maintain the political momentum for the purchase of the systems in question.
The reason these systems are not so useful in wars of aggression as they are in defensive wars is that in the latter case, destruction of the enemy’s offensive military capability is sufficient to achieve success. That is not the case with the former. (By offensive military capability I do not include the kind of trivial harassment represented by Hezbollah’s Katyusha etc attacks on Israel during the recent attack on Lebanon. I mean actual existential threats, or substantive threats to the territorial integrity of the target nation.)
The high-tech weapons are for “third-worlding”.
Let me explain what I mean with an example.
During the criminal Israeli aggression against Lebanon last year, a large dairy products business was destroyed. The account I read framed this act as “collateral”, but the owners were, as I recall, convinced that it was a deliberate act designed to remove them from the market they had developed, leaving it open now or in the future, to takeover by Israeli or US capital.
You “third world” a country by destroying its growth points. This selective activity is what the high-tech or “smart” weapons are designed to do. It is war a la carte. The capitalists of Nation A can even line up beforehand to specify which plants in Nation B they want destroyed.
From the capitalist point of view, this is a great advance on the “neutron bomb” theory of warfare, where the people are killed and the fixed assets are left standing.
Real capitalists know that fixed assets don’t make money by themselves, and are relatively easily replaced. In fact they frequently need replacing, anyway. Capital needs labour more than fixed assets – in the form of impoverished people who are compelled to sell their work potential daily so as to be able to buy food, at least, with cash.
Hence it is a much better plan for capitalists to destroy other peoples’ equipment, with weapons designed for that purpose, while leaving the people “third-worlded”, i.e. in a proletarian condition ready to be exploited as labour (and as market for goods, of course).
(This process would be accelerated if, for example, there was an extensive campaign of assasination and exiling of intellectuals. And, for example, if peasants’ fields were sown with cluster bombs.)
These weapons are designed to do what Imperialists have done before, as in India and in Africa. One could say they can’t help themselves. Imperialism stands or falls on its ability to create a great gulf of difference between the metropolis and the periphery. All talk by Imperialists of global “development” is worse than hypocrisy. It is plain lies. The existence of these kinds of weapons is part of the proof of that lie.
In Africa, we will never forget the Khartoum medicine factory that Clinton hit with a cruise missile.
Meanwhile, since Hizbullah showed its forces (and leadership) capable of withstanding the whizbangs last summer, you can bet that numerous other states or parties that fear they might be a target of similar attacks in the future have taken good note.
Well, maybe we DO more or less agree, then, HC and I?
Let’s put it to the test: the broadest geopolitical moral I have drawn from most of the recent troubles is that whoever stands strictly — VERY strictly, all preëmptive self-serving neo-nonsenses excluded — on the defensive nowadays becomes almost inexpugnable.
That provisional rule of thumb means Hizballáh is safe enough (for the moment) in south Lebanon, yet it also means that Israel is safe enough (for the moment) in the Levant.
Dominic, good point. I think what you call ‘third-worlding’ is what Sarah Roi and others call ‘de-development’. There are many ways of achieving de-development, of course. In the OPTs, Israel has used a combination of hi-tech direct physical assaults (especially in the spring of 2202) and lower-tech, longterm development-strangulation measures…
JHM, I think your conclusion is right, up to a point. If you recall, in my Boston Review article on the 33-day war I said that at the end of it both sides had succeeded in restoring the battlefield deterrence against the other that the outbreak and general course of the war up till then demonstrated had been lost. (And therefore, as I noted there, the ceasefire has a degree of structural robustness regardless of the size of deployment of UN peacekeeping forces…. That forecast has been borne out.)
However, at a broader level, most Israeli strategic planners right now feel that the course of last summer’s war left their ability to project a credible ‘big’ strategic deterrence had been badly dented. For me, that’s a source of concern. Might it motivate them to launch an additional, very demostrative ‘big’ strike someplace in an attempt to restore the credibility of their strategic deterrent capability?
I note that they had similar worries and concerns after the Egyptians and Syrians proved themselves undeterred from launching the 1973 war… But in the period after 1973 there was (and this was no accident) a very intensive effort by the US to regain strategic stability in the region by other means– i.e., by undertaking some very serious peace diplomacy between Egypt and Israel… and that forestalled any Israeli attempt to launch a demonstrative further military action until the 1978 invasion of Lebanon… This time, there is no peace diplomacy worthy of the name.
For some of us this question will always remind us of the 1973 publication of “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” by the Dar-es-Salaam intellectual Walter Rodney.
Rodney was later murdered in his native Guyana. The book is available in full on the Interent at http://www.marxists.org
A typical Israeli example in the OPT was the destruction of the Gaza power station last year.
The long sanctions against Iraq coupled with air strikes and no-fly zones are another.
It is a vile kind of policy that has its direct harvest of misery, disease and death.
Even South Africa has been significantly “underdeveloped” or “de-developed” since 1990.
HC: [A]t a broader level, most Israeli strategic planners right now feel that the course of last summer’s war left their ability to project a credible ‘big’ strategic deterrence had been badly dented. For me, that’s a source of concern. Might it motivate them to launch an additional, very demostrative ‘big’ strike someplace in an attempt to restore the credibility of their strategic deterrent capability?
I was not thinking of deterrence or retaliation when I suggested that nowadays anybody who is STRICTLY on the defensive is likely to do better than an aggressor, only of the cases where really fighting has actually happened. (Prëemptive retaliation, though, is only aggression accompanied by a certain type of press releases.)
“Big strategic deterrence” sounds like an Israeli scheme directed at Iran, and my generalization would apply to that case, I think, to the extent that it would almost certainly make the existing government politically stronger, even if nukeless. The exact application, though, would be if somebody was foolish enough to try to march to Tehran and change the régime. (Speaking of which, is it just my imagination, or is Gen. Petraeus really trying to tone down the anti-Safavid stuff from our other generals and colonels at Baghdad and from the Administration chickenhawks? Maybe he really is smarter than most of ’em? — although I’d have thought any West Pointer could see that their Iraq caper ought to be concluded before starting another one with all those troops out there for the Iranians to strike back at.)
In a different paper, Tira wrote
Maintaining the ability to handle the full spectrum of potential threats requires a force buildup and an operational concept based on the ability to engage in an all-out war in Syria, a war against Hizbollah, and a war on the Palestinian front, while maintaining strong strategic reserves in the case of escalation on another front. At the same time, this also requires deterring Iran and, if the deterrence fails, achieving a clear advantage in exchanging blows with Iran and creating a strategic balance with Iran in low-medium intensity conflicts. The timetable until the next war may be short and thus it is incumbent on Israel to act rapidly, diligently, and thoroughly while increasing the defense budget by billions of shekels.
It looks as if he thinks of deterrence only in connection with Iran (where there is no common border), with Hamás and Hizballáh and Damascus falling in some different category.
I don’t know enough about the Palestine situation to judge whether such views are typical in Tira’s circles, or enough about military science to judge whether they are sound. The man does sound pretty alarming, though, especially the scrap that I emphasized. I doubt he’d be happy to find himself cited in somebody else’s argument maintaining that war doesn’t work in general, or even only that high-tech war usually doesn’t.
The main problem with Dominic’s and Helena’s analysis of “de-development” is that it is unsupported by fact. When Israel first occupied the territories, it built infrastructure, opened universities, which led to DEVELOPMENT of the Palestinian economy. Palestinians who were completely unable to come into Israel before were allowed to come in and work. And Israelis, including settlers, frequented Palestinian businesses in the territory, allowing for further development.
We previously went over some of these figures. Of course, Helena deleted many of the posts because she didn’t like being factually contradicted.
The same thing happened in Lebanon. From 1977 to 2000, residents of Southern Lebanon, particularly the Maronite Christians who were friendly with Israel, made use of the “Good Fence” to obtain employment and export goods through Haifa.
The stunning decline in the occupied territories and in Lebanon is not so much a result of “Israeli occupation” but a result of renewed hostilities. The re-igniting of the intifada, the expulsion of the Jewish community of Gaza, and the building of the separation barrier to prevent terrorist infiltration into Israel have all wrecked the Palestinian economy.
But this is not due to an attempt to “third-worldize” or “de-develop” Palestine. Israel actually WANTS better economic relations with the Palestinians. And despite the rockets, the suicide bombs, the election of Hamas, Israelis still remarkably try to create such ties at the micro and macro level.
For example: A group of Israeli and Palestinian entrepeneurs, despite the conflict, are working to develop a “virtual operating system” which could revolutionize the industry.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3395852,00.html
And on a government level, despite the hostilities, Israel recently agreed to purchase natural gas from companies operating in the Palestinian Authority, which PNA has a stake in.
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/DocView.asp?did=1000209059&fid=1725
Israel does not want to de-develop anyone. Just the opposite. By creating economic ties and cooperation between the countries, you make the conditions for peace possible.
But with groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah waging war on Israel, such cooperation becomes less possible. Sadly, the Palestinians are the larger losers in such a conflict.
Joshua, what you do used to be called “apologetics” when I was at school.
Now, this thread is about standoff bombs and what they are for. The destruction of the Lebanese dairy plant and the Gaza power station have been led in evidence.
In response you write something resembling a general induction pamphlet for new arrivals to Israel from New York. The kind that the dissillusioned will later look ruefully back upon.
You’re not doing yourself any favours thereby. So hhow about trying to redeem yourself with an honest admission of what these weapons are used for?
Let me put it this way: Armed bulldozers are for knocking down family homes, right? Likewise, standoff bombs are for destroying factories and infrastructure. Simple. Admit it or try to deny it, or just keep quiet. But please don’t keep evading. A standoff bore is not as bad as a standoff bomb, but who needs it?
Dominic, Hezbollah’s arsenal of missiles are also stand-off weapons unlikely to accomplish any tactical objective but harassment of Israel and the promotion of further conflict. Whereas Joshua hasn’t uttered a word in defence of bulldozers. Instead of trying to bully us with pedantic sneering, how about an honest admission that Hezbollah has no business possessing, much less using their own lethal “toys”?
Oh wait — I forgot: “Israel is a settler colony. It has no right to exist.”
And yet Dominic sees himself on the side of peace… what a joke!
Pardon me, Vadim: Your snarl is showing.
Dominic, you are the one who decided to divert the discussion with marxist claptrap of de-development. Whatever one feels about Israel’s response to Hezbollah’s unprovoked aggression, to claim that Israel decided to target businesses because they were economic competition for Israeli capital is, to be euphemistic, farfetched.
I do understand why Israel bashing, previously the province of the far right, has gained currency in a fringe of leftist thought as well. There’s a lot of resentment toward Israel because it was the one national liberation movement of the 20th century that actually not only to political emancipation, but a remarkable increase in prosperity. This is totally foreign to some people, who prefer to wail about the ills of the after-effects of oppression. Israel is a counter-example that belies much of the argument.
So one has to instead falsely present Zionism not as the national liberation that it was, but instead import labels like colonialism. It makes for a truely Orwellian display, Dominic.
As Vadim quite accurately points out, you are at least candid in your admission that you refuse to accept Israel’s right to exist, and support violent resistance toward it’s elimination. You are the only one who has defended violence and a refusal to make peace with the other side. But that’s just more newspeak from Dominic. Typical.
Candid newspeak? That’s actually quite good, Josh.
Dominic,
You are candid in your call for the destruction of Israel.
Your attempt to phrase it in progressive or pro-peace terms is what is newspeak.
Oh. I see.
http://www.jcpa.org/brief/brief006-10.htm#link15
Let’s see:
Number of rockets fired: 4228
Number of military targets: zero
Acres of land recovered: zero
captive soldiers recovered: zero
“installation of a stable and sustainable better order” er- no
“destruction of the enemy’s offensive military capability?” none
“bloodlessness to gizmo-owners?” er-hardly
glories victories alleged: one
With stats like these, who’d see Hezbollah’s war of choice -initiated with a cross border raid and missile attack- as anything but a glorious victory? I’m sure they’re eager to repeat the experience. Maybe our own armchair guerrillas can goad them into it.
“who’d see Hezbollah’s war of choice”
Vadim, I hared this story I don’t know how much truth in it, but we see something from it about ” Hezbollah’s war of choice”?
In the end of the trial of Mao Tsi Tung’s wife, while the judge reading the sentence, Mao’s wife laughed loudly! Then the judge asked her why she laughing?
She replayed to him by saying: you executed the dog’s mouth not the dog!!!
Not sure where to put this-Perhaps a section on Gaza on JWN? It is tragic that Daoud Kattab’s call for peacekeeping in Gaza (at the suggestion of the Italians) was never implemented-This article from the BBC does not do justice to the radical cultural terrorism which hit Gaza last evening-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6632383.stm
Joshua,
Israel does not want to de-develop anyone. Just the opposite. By creating economic ties and cooperation between the countries, you make the conditions for peace possible.
These words are from a letter written by Dr Shlomo Shmelzman, a survivor of the Holocaust, to the press in Israel announcing his courageous hunger strike at the height of the bombing of West Beirut in Lebanon in August 1982
You do have to admit, though, that Joshua’s argument above that seeks to prove that Israel did not ‘de-develop’ the occupied territories or occupied southern Lebanon is truly hilarious in the form it takes and the unexamined assumptions he builds it on. Basically, it takes as a given that prior to Israel’s occupation of these areas there was zero significant economic or intellectual activity, and that it was only after the enlightened Israelis came to rule over them that the people there could find jobs and markets…
Well, it would be a hilarious revelation of Joshua’s own deep ignorance of the societies concerned in their pre-occupation eras (and of the way that colonial societies always systematically try to build the indigenes’ deep dependence on the colonizers’ economies, including by destroying indigenous economic capabilities)– it would be hilarious, were it not for the fact that the kinds of arguments he makes there do have some continuing credibility amongst many Americans…
As for the Palestinian universities: yes they are valuable institutions. But many Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank had access to fine universities before 1967– in Cairo, Amman, Damascus, Beirut, Baghdad, and elsewhere. Also, the Palestinians had to fight every step of the way to establish such places as Bir Zeit, Beit Laham University, Gaza Islamic, U., etc. It wasn’t done through any “grace and favor” from the occupying power– let alone any financial subsidies (such as have, of course, been shoveled very generously into all of Israel’s own institutions of higher education including the ones now being established inside the settlements.)
Then, there’s the question of what the graduates of the Palestinian universities do when they graduate? Where are the bustling economic or cultural projects for them to work in?
The comparison to keep in mind is what these still-occupied communities would have looked like today if there had NOT been any 40-year period of living under the Israeli military yoke. I wager Gaza might have looked very much like Cairo, and the West Bank like Amman. Or perhaps, in both cases, quite a bit better given the Palestinians’ higher levels of educational attainment.
Instead of which…
Joshua, do you have much knowledge of the state of Palestinian society and south Lebanese society prior to them coming under their respective bouts of Israeli occupation? Or of the degree of economic and social development Egypt and Jordan have experienced in the past 40 years? Do tell us about your familiarity with such matters.
Sure Helena, I have never professed specific professional training, which is the same thing that can be said for just about everyone else in the conversation. But the subject is one that I have followed quite a bit as a layman. Enough that I can point out some of the more egregious factual errors and assumptions of someone like yourself, who purports to be an expert.
We went over this around a year or so ago. Myself and other participants went over several statistics which showed that all major economic indicators, as well as indicators of well-being such as literacy, infant mortality, and the like, improved after 1967.
Another thing which is quite objectionable is your remarkable misstatement of my post (you have a tendency to create a lot of straw men, it’s a pretty shamful tactc). I never said that there was no economic or intellectual activity. But I did say that once Israel occupied the territories, these indicators improved. Whether or not Israel was “generous” in allowing Bir Zeit University to open is besides the point. The fact is that Israel DID allow it to open, while Egypt and Jordan did not allow ANY universities (other than teacher’s colleges) to open during their much more brutal occupation of those territories.
Given that Palestinian economic and educational developments proceeded better than that in other Arab countries, I think your claim that the Israelis “de-developed” the territories makes no sense (in any event, “de-development” implies removal, and even if development wasn’t as swift as it was in other countries, it clearly was not “de-developed.”).
Helena, I know you are uncomfortable when someone does not share your vindictiveness and hatred toward Israel, and does not share your patronizing Great White Mother attitude toward the Palestinians. Nevertheless that is no excuse for you to fail to acknowledge when the facts simply don’t support your broad overgeneralizations. Instead you try to attack me by asking whether I have any expertise. Meanwhile, there are several posters who routinely delve into off topic and counter-factual posts, but that’s ok so long as they are deranged rants about Israel.
In any event, if you want to insist that, after 1967, economic and other indicators actually decreased in the territories, I’d love to see the evidence. But if you can’t do that, then I really do not need patronizing and condescending lectures from you.
This for Joshua
World Bank criticises Israel over Palestinian economy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2075622,00.html
Developing the Occupied Territories: an investment in peace By World Bank
http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=5I98sd2cR_AC&dq=World+Bank+report+on+restrictions+imposed+by+Israel+&pg=PA1&ots=XTGvt1GrDb&sig=-HYvJ1yT0Yd4DOWkCb4wbug32zc&prev=http://www.google.co.nz/search%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3DWorld%2BBank%2Breport%2Bon%2Brestrictions%2Bimposed%2Bby%2BIsrael%2B%26btnG%3DGoogle%2BSearch%26meta%3D&sa=X&oi=print&ct=result&cd=1
Middle East Review 2003/2004: The Economic and Business Report By World of Information (Firm, International Chamber of Commerce
http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=78ACLNgHdf4C&dq=World+Bank+report+on+restrictions+imposed+by+Israel+&pg=PA164&ots=0u4Eb2Tv27&sig=ioqeZg-rxExCoyuoy_R98btU-cs&prev=http://www.google.co.nz/search%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3DWorld%2BBank%2Breport%2Bon%2Brestrictions%2Bimposed%2Bby%2BIsrael%2B%26btnG%3DGoogle%2BSearch%26meta%3D&sa=X&oi=print&ct=result&cd=2
Joshua said: “Helena, I know you are uncomfortable when someone does not share your vindictiveness and hatred toward Israel, and does not share your patronizing Great White Mother attitude toward the Palestinians.”
I find the sort of cheap, groundless psychologizing embodied in the above statement endlessly entertaining. This statement is both petulant, and like cases of psychological projection generally, bereft of any empirical grounding. Since I recently found this web-site, I have to admit that I’m perversely impressed by Joshua’s tenacity in attempting to derail the substantive flow of discussion on these threads. Your (undoubtedly weary) tolerance, Helena, for such a clear obstructor of rational discourse is truly laudable.