Disproportionate Response
Posted by James R. Rummel on August 28th, 2006 (All posts by James R. Rummel)
Famed blogger Steven den Beste asked me if I would mind posting a few of his thoughts. Not at all! And here they are.
During the recent war in southern Lebanon, one of the many complaints leveled at Israel was that its response was “disproportionate”. Care to hear the reason why the complainers wanted Israel to limit itself to “proportionate” responses?
Once upon a time war was pretty simple: a couple of mobs of armed men met on a field somewhere more or less by appointment, and after some yelling and singing to get their courage up, they swarmed towards each other, with each individual man doing his best to try to harm men from the other side without getting hurt himself. Later you started getting different units of men armed in different ways, who fought with different weapons, but it remained the case that when a particular unit got involved in combat, it was as an undisciplined mob.
Then the Greeks/Macedonians developed the pike, and for the first time you needed the men of a unit to move and fight as a team. That initiated the era of modern warfare which peaked with Napoleon, where maneuver was important and a great general could win against a more powerful enemy if he was smarter and craftier.
Pre-industrial warfare, as typified by Napoleon, pretty much came to an end during the 19th century, to be replaced by what I refer to as industrial warfare. The American Civil War was the first major industrial war, and what set it apart from previous wars was the overwhelming dominance of logistics in deciding the conflict. The South has the majority of the best generals, but the North still won because of its overwhelming logistical superiority. (Of course, it required Lincoln to understand that he had to fight a long war, and it took a general ruthless enough to sacrifice enough of his own men in order to win.)
By the early 20th century industrial warfare dominated war all over the world. It was only in the last part of the 20th century that a new form appeared: information-age war. But right now the US is the only real practictioner of this way of war, and in the rest of the world industrial war remains the norm.
Industrial war can be summed up this way: God fights on the side which has the biggest pile of ammunition and the fastest rate of replacement of expended ammunition. Like any general principle it’s not absolutely unconditionally true, but that’s the norm.
In response, two new strategic doctrines of war were developed to make it possible for small logistically-poor forces to contend against large logistically-rich forces without getting instantly crushed: guerrilla warfare and terrorist warfare. Both of them seek to nullify the logistical advantage of their richer opponents by maintaining initiative, so as to control the tempo of the war at a level low enough to not exhaust the logistics of the poorer side. For the rest of this discussion I’ll be concentrating on guerrillas.
Guerrillas hide among civilians, and only come out and form up when they choose to fight. The rest of the time they’re invisible, which makes it impossible for their rich opponent to find them.
It’s possible for guerrillas to win directly, but the doctrine doesn’t assume that to be the only way victory can be achieved. The idea is to try to fight a long slow war and to build strength. Guerrillas try to maintain a force-in-being, and concentrate heavily on propaganda. By so doing they try to wear out their opponent, try to rally supporters, and try to find patrons elsewhere to support the fight. When handled ideally all these begin slow but increase in effectiveness as time goes on. As their strength builds, they can make more attacks, and get more headlines. The other side’s war weariness grows. Patrons see the guerrillas winning and are more enthusiastic about providing more and better weapons and supplies to help them. Locals see them winning and are more likely to join or otherwise support them.
Anyone recognize Hezbollah in what I just wrote? That’s what they’ve been trying to do in Lebanon. They haven’t been trying for a single big set-piece battle to defeat Israel; instead they’ve been building their strength slowly over time. In fact, it’s not even clear that Hezbollah is trying to win against Israel; their primary goal at this time may be to try to dominate Lebanon. But for political reasons, making ostentatious attacks against Israel has served them well in propaganda terms, and as a result of their general successes over the course of a few years their strength and prestige has been growing, leading to more support (or at least tacit acceptance) in Lebanon, and more logistical support from Syria and Iran. When there was a bloodless revolt in Lebanon against Syrian domination, Hezbollah emerged as one of the major power brokers and had to be included in the ruling coalition there.
They’re slowing making the transition from hidden guerrilla forces mixed in with the civilian population to more organized and formal units, but hidden forced remained the majority of their force. Then they made the decision to grab a couple of Israeli soldiers.
IMHO Israel botched this war, but that’s not the question I wanted to address in this discussion. The question I began with was, why did so many people demand “proportionate” responses from Israel, and condemn Israel’s bombing campaign as being “disproportionate”?
It’s because Israel refused to play the game. Israel opened up an offensive which ran at a logistically unsustainable rate for Hezbollah, which Hezbollah could not avoid fighting. The code word “proportionate” really meant, “Israel, you have to limit yourself to fighting at a level that Hezbollah can sustain. Otherwise it’s just not fair!”
Of course that’s idiocy; war isn’t about fairness. But that’s what they were really saying. Hezbollah did make a major mistake in that attack, because they had developed to the point where they actually presented a target Israel could fight against at a tempo Israel could sustain but Hezbollah could not. Israel had the opportunity to crush Hezbollah, but Olmert lost his nerve.
August 29th, 2006 at 4:45 am
Israel had the opportunity to crush Hezbollah
I really do want to believe that. But as the war wound down, we heard news reports that Hezbollah wasn’t actually hurt so badly. Their rocket attacks increased, for example, instead of decreasing. Supposedly, Israel was smashing Lebanese infrastructure without actually doing much harm to the underground guerillas of Hezbollah.
Was all this just anti-Israel media spin?
August 29th, 2006 at 5:17 am
I DO think Israel could have blasted Hezbollah if it had the resolve to do it, but with all the weaponry, logistics, comunication shortages and wrong tactics being reported now in lots of military media, I think losses would have been quite high. With a bit of luck, this war will have teached the IDF what works and what not, and in a few months they’ll be able to go at it again, with more luck. At least this seems to be what Israeli people want right now.
August 29th, 2006 at 8:17 am
I can’t help escape the impression that people who talk about “proportionate” responses look at warfare as some form of theater or performance art. They seem more concerned about the symbolism of the various tactics and strategies than their efficacy or humaneness.
Real war follows the old saying, “you don’t fight a pig by getting down in the mud and biting it.”
August 29th, 2006 at 8:24 am
Gaijin Biker, over the short run Hezbollah did start firing rockets at a much higher rate. But that was because they thought they were in a “use them or lose them” situation. They had a big stockpile of rockets, carefully and slowly built up over a period of years, which they used up a large part of in the course of a couple of weeks.
But they were not receiving replacements at the rate they were firing them.
It’s not uncommon in situations where the poorer foe is operating at a logistically unsustainable rate for him to seem to be putting up a good fight — for a while. The other side has to have the fortitude to stick with the fight at that high rate, and to wait for the poorer opponent to run out his stockpiles. (Which is what Olmert didn’t do.)
August 29th, 2006 at 8:57 am
I can see how a leader could decide against war, and I can see how one would decide for war.
But I can’t understand how a leader would decide for war, send troops into battle, gain the upper hand, and then fail to see his decision through. Feh.
August 29th, 2006 at 10:53 am
“Their rocket attacks increased, for example, instead of decreasing.”
The action fluctuates in war. Every upward spike doesn’t necessarily mean the enemy is getting stronger. We’ll never know for sure because there is no open and transparent flow of information coming from Hezbollah. Sometimes, like in the American Civil War, the worst fighting occurs as one side is collapsing. Again we’ll never know because Israel called the game off in the third inning.
August 29th, 2006 at 11:07 am
SDB once wrote, about the manouever where the Indian air force supposedly “beat” the American air force — in reality you don’t pit air force against air force, you pit total force against total force. In the situation Israel is facing with Hezbollah, it is not Hezbollah’s fighters versus the IDF and IAF. It is total society versus total society. Moreover, it is total society v. total society in the context of total alliance framework versus total alliance framework. Moreover, there is no “military” victory in isolation. There is only changed positions within and between the total alliance frameworks.
Looking at it in that way, the picture becomes a little different. The Hezbollah side = Hezbollah in Lebanon + Syrian support + Iranian support + complicit (for their own reasons) news media and various activist groups in the West. The Israeli side = Israel, its political will, its military + support from the USA + tacit “green light” from Sunni Arab states + muted opposition from European countries. Where did the strong and weak points turn out to be? The strongest factor in the war turned out to be the Western media, Hezbollah’s all but explicit ally, which shaped the political battlefield and defined the meaning of the action, provided a vocabulary to talk about the action. The weakest factor in the war turned out to be the Israeli political leadership which could not bring itself to persevere in the face of the media-driven political environment. Another loser was the Israeli military, which provided itself ill-prepared for the conflict. The American leadership, which defined the situation as a “problem” amendable by a “ceasefire” also demonstrated weakness, hence losing on points. For Hezbollah, the conflict was probably a defeat, only because its physical assets, human and material, were badly damaged.
What is proportional or not depends on the task being undertaken. The Israelis never defined what task they were undertaking, so that they could maintain flexibility, or because they were confused, or both. Hence, what is or is not proportional was left open to be defined by the most important enemy in the war, Hezbollah’s de facto ally, and the implicit ally of terrorism generally, the news media.
August 29th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
Didn’t help that throughout the fighting the oxymoronic UN peace-keepers were publishing and posting “daily real-time intelligence…on the location, equipment, and force structure of Israeli troops in Lebanon.” And, “not a single item of specific intelligence regarding Hezbollah forces.”
Talk about asymmetrical information.
August 29th, 2006 at 12:02 pm
While the media seem to have hardened their positions, their strategies are more transparent than a decade ago. Since their strength depends upon trust, the last few years have undercut (to some degree) their effectiveness.
August 29th, 2006 at 3:10 pm
In the words of Henry Kissinger: “The conventional army loses if it does not win.
The guerrilla wins if he does not lose…” Using this rubric, Hezbollah won.
August 29th, 2006 at 3:11 pm
The major mistake was that they thought they could win with airpower. It seems that some in the Air Forces around refuse to learn that Air Power works great in helping win wars it can in the right circumstances devastate an emeny army such as happened in Gulf War I. BUT it cannot defeat someone like Hezbollah. Only boots on the ground can do that.
Israel was not willing to make that commitment. They tried to do it on the cheap. It didn’t work. It has never worked. Troops must go in and dig Hezbollah out of their holes and KILL them. I hope that they have learned this.
I hope WE have learned this. Air Power will not keep Iran from the BOMB. Only Boots on the ground finding the places where the equipment is and destroying it will work. You bomb a underground factory and what do you know. Nothing. You don’t know how much you distroyed. If what you hit was what you wanted to hit. Nothing.
August 29th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
I think that Israel’s mistake was more strategic than tactical. If the IDF/IAF had launched an assault on Syria’s military and political assets, it would have won over the anti-Syria and fence-sitting elements in Lebanon while demonstrating beyond doubt that Hezbollah was a strategic liability rather than an asset to Syria and, perhaps, Iran. Once Baby Assad started to lose his tanks in the Bekaa Valley, I suspect that Hezbollah’s political stance would have been much less tenable.
August 29th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
When this war ended I was convinced the Olmert and Halutz had botched it completely, by fighting a war that was reliant on the reduction of the Hezbollah static positions with an emphasis on guided munitions from the IAF. The problem with that is that Halutz and his top generals told the USAF in 2002 that the Israeli’s would rely on domestically produced FAE to do the work of bunker busting rather than penetrators, with predictable results. A de-emphasis on infantry tactical training over the past few years did the IDF no good, either.
The surprising truthful statement by Nasrallah that he probably wouldn’t have committed the original attack/kidnapping if he had know what the response would have been, really highlights the fact that the Lebanese people are angry as hell, and Hezbollah has reportedly had to cancel several ‘victory’ celebrations due to a hostile response by the supposed victors.
One other factor that will be interesting to note in the future is the incredibly rapid debunking of faked propaganda photos published by Reuters. The blogs just keep getting more relevant to the ‘clash of civilizations’.
SDB, Thank You very much for your insight into this, I really learn a lot from your writing!
August 29th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
I think that Israel’s mistake was more strategic than tactical. If the IDF/IAF had launched an assault on Syria’s military and political assets, it would have won over the anti-Syria and fence-sitting elements in Lebanon while demonstrating beyond doubt that Hezbollah was a strategic liability rather than an asset to Syria and, perhaps, Iran. Once Baby Assad started to lose his tanks in the Bekaa Valley, I suspect that Hezbollah’s political stance would have been much less tenable.
August 29th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
Greetings, SDB. Nice post. I’ve got one thing to add. Something you’re leaving out of the “proportionality” discussion is that it’s a term of art in the Just War tradition. It means something quite specific in that context: the proportionality requirement is a matter of proportionality between the cost in lives and the value of the military goal, not proportionality of casualties on both sides.
Pat Buchanan, who surely knows better, pretends to miss this point in his anti-Semitic rant at RCP, Israel is Playing Us For Fools. This allows him to pretend that those nasty Zionists — who aren’t Christian, btw — are anathema to Christian morality (as manifest in the Just War tradition):
If Israel is not in violation of the principle of proportionality, by which Christians are to judge the conduct of a just war, what can that term mean? There are 600 civilian dead in Lebanon, 19 in Israel, a ratio of 30-1, though Hezbollah is firing unguided rockets, while Israel is using precision-guided munitions.
Notice that Buchanan invokes Just War theory in order to speak of Christian moral standards of war, but uses the key term “proportionality” in the common way — as if the proportionality required by the theory were proportionality of the dead. Of course he thereby sets standards for the prosecution of war that no US (foreign) war has ever met, especially not the “Good War.” But it’s a clever bit of rhetorical red meat for the slavering anti-Jew crowd.
August 29th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
Some of us are just delighted to see any words of wisdom from SDB. No further comment needed from me - just THANKS to Glenn for the heads up!
August 29th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
Mr. DenBeste,
For what it’s worth, an excellent article, as usual.
Shannon Love,
Its always kind of struck me as sadly ironic that the people who most loudly and vociferously seek to remind the rest of us that “war is not a game”, seem to be the first and quickest to apply the rules and assumptions of sport to military conflict
August 29th, 2006 at 3:48 pm
Bill Dalasio,
It is also those who cry the loudest against supposed Israeli or American violations international “law” or the laws-of-war are the first to ignore or excuse the explicit and intentional violations of our enemies.
They forget the Roman admonishment that, “the law is for all or none.”
August 29th, 2006 at 3:50 pm
Another factor being reported from Israeli sources is a failure of the Israeli logistics system with stockpiles of supplies not being present as expected and poor IDF training during the 20 years since the last major campaign. There may be some corruption going on in the supply story. I have also read that the IDF found 10 story deep bunkers, much more sophisticated than expected so there was some intelligence failure as well. There will almost certainly be a round two unless Iran has a revolution.
August 29th, 2006 at 3:50 pm
Re: “use or lose” use of missiles - yes, certainly, and of course don’t overlook the propaganda value of appearing stronger than you are when it no longer matters, or when you believe that a(n unsustainable) show of strength may be the last straw for your opponent.
I hesitate to pull military analogies from fiction, but… The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress: the scrappy revolutionaries have only so many steel-clad rocks to throw at the Earth. They know they’re going to run out - it’s inevitable. So how best to use their last of their supply? Should they toss them at a trickle and so extend the time over which they can be considered “armed and dangerous”? Or stick to their schedule of volleys even knowing that they only have one more round?
They decide to stick to the schedule, because signs indicate that there’s movement on the diplomatic front Earthside. Being fiction, it works. Hezbollah, unfortunately being a nonfiction entity, waited until the cease-fire was pretty much in the bag, then threw that last punch to “prove” that they weren’t on the ropes, and to keep their patrons on board (who wants to patronize a loser? Cheer for one, yes; sponsor one, not so much).
Re: “Just Wars” - pah. One side adheres to a self-imposed just peace, but has to hamstring itself in order to let the unjust and amoral have a chance at victory?
August 29th, 2006 at 3:52 pm
The idea of proportionality in wartime combat is nonsense. I am a WWII Marine. The object of warfare is to defeat an opposing force. You use all the tools at hand.
August 29th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
Jamie, Paul:
Maybe I didn’t make my point clearly enough. I’m neither supporting nor attacking Just War doctrine, just pointing out that “proportionality” as a criterion of moral conduct in war didn’t appear out of nowhere — it came from this tradition. However, it’s meaning in that tradition is not the meaning that has been getting invoked wrt Israel. In particular, it has nothing to do with measuring one side’s dead against the other. By that criterion, as Buchanan must realize, all US wars would be immoral. But that isn’t the criterion, and if it were, the theory would be worthless.
August 29th, 2006 at 4:42 pm
IMO, Hezbollah [a terrorist org] instigated this war to send the barely recovered Lebanon a message - that, Hezbollah can spin the nation into chaos anytime they please.
And, to stem the rapidly hemorrahging Syrian influence in the levant
August 29th, 2006 at 4:48 pm
Anyone who brings up the casualty numbers on each side to claim disproportionate force by the IDF deserves scorn. By that ‘logic’, Israel is evil because it expended effort to protect its civilian population and Hezbollah did not.
The Lebanese people need to ask why, when Hezbollah was fortifying southern Lebanon, they failed to take any equivalent steps to protect civilians from bombardment. Then, perhaps, they might want to reconsider their support for an organization that is eager to feed their children to a meat grinder for the sake of propaganda.
August 29th, 2006 at 5:05 pm
A big thank you to SDB for an excellent synthesis of the problem, and a thanks to ‘Lex’ in the comments for a useful extension. A question to ponder (and I don’t know the answer to this, and this is NOT one of those ‘yes but’ comments designed to irritate the posting party!) –
– which side in this particular conflict, the Israelis or Hezbollah, is more likely to learn from their mistakes in the last round?
From this post, the news, etc., I can imagine that the Israeli mistakes are clear: lack of clarity as to their goals, a political structure that was unsuited to the needs of the conflict, unwillingness to ’stick it out’ for several weeks or months to achieve those goals, an army that had become soft and less-well equipped to undertake the needed mission, an under-appreciation of Hezbollah anti-tank weapons and tactics, an over-reliance on air power, and alienating major political patrons (there may be more I’m missing).
Likewise, I can identify at least some of the weaknesses of Hezbollah: miscalculating the willingness of the Israelis to hit back hard, unsustainable consumption of military supplies, inability to fight it out with Israeli infantry units, inability to prevent precision air strikes from depleting needed resources, and alienating major political patrons. Again, there may be more I’m missing.
And so often in war, it becomes a matter of learning from one’s initial mistakes. Hezbollah is mostly a ‘black-box’ to me, and I don’t understand a fair bit of Israeli politics. So any insight into the question, who’s going to learn from their mistakes best, would be helpful and (perhaps) interesting.
August 29th, 2006 at 5:58 pm
Mr. den Beste: Many thanks for the wise words. Exactly as I remember you to be: thought-provoking and spot-on in your analysis.
August 29th, 2006 at 6:10 pm
I think one element of round 1 of the Israeli / Hezbollah street brawl that has not been examined is the pitiful state of readiness shown by the Israeli ground forces. The artillery, the tankers, and the infantry were not ready for this war, they had insufficient stockpiles, and inadequate ready supplies of all the necesssary material for waging war.
Further the morale of the soldiers was at an all time low for any Israeli units actually involved in combat.
This could have been a major disaster for Israel if they had to deploy any of these unready units any further into Lebanon.
Maybe the U.N. mandated cease fire is a good thing for Israel. Giving Hezbollah time to rearm may not be as important as giving the Israeli Army time to get its act together.
otpu
August 29th, 2006 at 6:53 pm
So much non sense has been written about this war! While the post makes a good deal of sense, it ought to consider the just-released brief statement from Hezbollah that had they known Israel would strike back with such intensity they would not have nabbed the soldiers!
In fact, if one or the other side “won,” thenwho lost?Lebanon! Now, to the point. Imagine that Hezbollah does in fact totally rearm. does anyone honestly believe they will begin lobbing rockets again at Israel and have Lebanon again destroyed?
israeldid not launch a full military attack because they knew the cost in Israeli lives.
Hezbollah will either take over Lebanon politically and turn that country into a sattelite of Iran and Suria–an odd combo!–or Hezbollah will be seen as a troublesome cancer that will destroy the country if allowed to grow. The choice is that of the voters.
August 29th, 2006 at 6:57 pm
What a wonderful surprise, to find a piece by Mr. Den Beste! I liked this analysis very much.
Israel’s population is too small to fight a “meatgrinder” war–they may have to just suffer the jeers of Hezbollah and its patrons and Western fans until next time.
As for “industrial war”, I think this is a prescient thought, from the end of the 19th Century:
August 29th, 2006 at 7:54 pm
So, the Islamist in the form of Hezzbollah tried something different. Next time, or the time after, they will try nuclear weapons. Maybe infiltrating terrorists, light planes, and goodbye Tel Aviv, Jerusalem. Three bombs would be better. A billion Muslims will thank God. And what will the Israelis do? I cannot imagine surviving Jews staying.
August 29th, 2006 at 8:25 pm
You’re on the mark on the important stuff, but your description of the Civil War is reflective of a popular, yet inaccurate myth: that the North won due to logistical superiority and not due to the genius of its military leaders. It is true that the North had a series of disappointing Generals-in-Chief. But General Grant was not one of them. He was a military genius and recent scholarship on the subject demonstrates this.
August 29th, 2006 at 9:06 pm
Sorry Steven, you’ve completely misrepresented the “disproportionate” argument. Israel attacked bridges, hospitals and airports, handing Hezbollah a massive, warranted public opinion advantage.
You acknowledge that Israel lost the battle and suffered in public opinion terms. Both of those are true and the reason that happened is that the respone was disproportionate.
Moreover, Israel routinely kidnapped and killed Arabs in both southern Lebanon and Gaza. If that is a cause of war, then it’s safe to say Israel started it.
August 29th, 2006 at 9:17 pm
The lessons of this war will be best used by the Israelis who will be better prepared the next time. Since their backs are to the sea, the have more incentive to learn from one’s own mistakes. The Arabs have a hard time admitting their mistakes which condemn their armies to making the same mistakes repeatedly.
Plus, if Hizbollah rank and file believes that it won, it makes it hard to change yourself to meet the next threat.
August 29th, 2006 at 10:12 pm
Here’s hoping that SDB can be convinced to continue posting his astute analyses to ChicagoBoyz or RedState. For those of us who miss USS Clueless, Den Beste’s occasional short MetaFilter posts have been a poor substitute for the real thing.
August 29th, 2006 at 10:33 pm
So if Israel lost the war why is Hizballah leaving Lebanon. Giving up their Shaba issue?
Militias Disarmed?
Pointing Out the Obvious
Hizbollah Beats Israel Loses Arabs
August 29th, 2006 at 10:33 pm
How a Lebanese Catholic sees it. You also have Anton Enfendi not romanticizing Hezbollah or Syria. David Grossman, who lost a son, killed in a tank subsequently, and other Israeli authors spoke out for asking Lebanon to assume a role deciding about Hezbollah. Why can’t that happen?
August 29th, 2006 at 10:37 pm
What we are watching is modern siege warfare and most folks don’t get it.
Cash Flow Jihad Meets Aftermath
Cash Flow Jihad Strikes Hamas
Iran to Enter Cash Flow Jihad Zone
and why is Hizballah having such a bitter victory?
The Bitter Taste of Victory
August 29th, 2006 at 10:37 pm
bunkerbuster,
Israel attacked bridges, hospitals and airports, handing Hezbollah a massive, warranted public opinion advantage.
*Sigh* transportation and communication networks used by military forces are legitimate targets. Ditto for hospitals if offensive military assets (like rocket launchers) are stationed there.(They caught people lying red-handed about that) Hezbollah was tightly intertwined with the civilian infrastructure throughout Lebanon.
Israel lost the PR war because the world wide major media repeated every piece of Hezbollah fabricated information as the gospel truth.
August 29th, 2006 at 11:01 pm
“Israel had the opportunity to crush Hezbollah, but Olmert lost his nerve”
Olmert was a fool but his going ” wobbly” in terms of nerve wasn’t really the relevant factor in Israel’s poor peformance. Israel’s strategy made very little sense because it did not match means with ends. An EBO attack works poorly against irregulars and wasn’t going to destroy decentralized Hezbollah cells regardless of how intensely it was employed.
August 29th, 2006 at 11:12 pm
War is about politics by other means.
Hizballah is a spent force in Lebanon.
Syria has 100s of thousands of Hizballah supporters to deal with.
Iran doesn’t have the cash to maintain Shia support in Lebanon (the greenbacks - American currency - they were handing out were counterfiet)
The new Hizballah of Syria may be the old Hizballah of Lebanon. Somewhat the worse for wear.
August 29th, 2006 at 11:36 pm
Has a guerrilla force ever won directly? It seems to me that the only time guerrillas have won is when they developed into actual armies, as with Castro and Mao. Guerrillas can force a stalemate, for sure, but I don’t know of any that have won a war directly.
August 30th, 2006 at 1:24 am
What seems to be missing from most (not all) of this discussion is the most important factor: Will Power. Hezbollah has it over the long run. Western Democracies are not good at maintaining Will Power. Totalitarian societies are. Hitler would cut through armies like Hezbollah or Iraqi insurgents like a scythe, and would win easily because he would be fighting for Total Victory, meaning, Unconditional Surrender most likely combined with Ethnic Cleansing. If non-combatants assisted the guerillas they would be eliminated. Industrial totalitarian regimes combine logistical power with will power, and overcome the guerilla’s edge.
We don’t want to have to become a Totalitarian society to achieve victory, but we don’t have the will power to fight for total victory against opponents that are willing to stay in the fight and take any punishment we dish out. Our society therefore gets the impression that wars aren’t worth fighting. Well, they’re not worth fighting the way we fight them against the type of enemy we’re fighting, that’s for sure.
I don’t know what the solution to this dilemma is.
August 30th, 2006 at 2:33 am
Maybe I didn’t make my point clearly enough. I’m neither supporting nor attacking Just War doctrine, just pointing out that “proportionality” as a criterion of moral conduct in war didn’t appear out of nowhere — it came from this tradition.[...]
Are there any examples of any nation fighting a war as per Just War doctrine describes and winning? I an unable to think of any, but my knowledge of military history is far from encyclopedic.
I am inclined to consider Just War doctrine/theory/tradition to be a bit of philosophical nonsense thought up by pacifists who have the ultimate goal of making war unfightable.
The sooner it is recognized for what it is, the better.
August 30th, 2006 at 2:45 am
Shannon Love writes: “*Sigh* transportation and communication networks used by military forces are legitimate targets.”
What about office towers?
August 30th, 2006 at 2:51 am
Thanks SDB - once again, rational and intelligent.
The good news is that Hezbollah, while fighting a guerilla war, has yet to have a “Valley Forge” Moment. As such, I think their morale will continue to sink. More importantly, Hezbollah’s biggest ally - the Media - has been wounded. No longer will the major networks show a picture of an ambulance with a 6″ hole in the roof and claim it was a missile attack. Israel might just be able to openly attack a mosque with all networks stationed next door and get away with it considering the gaping hole Hezbollah has suffered in its credibility. This is where Hezbollah has been most hurt.
August 30th, 2006 at 3:17 am
“Israel might just be able to openly attack a mosque with all networks stationed next door and get away with it.”
At least you’re honest about how radically biased your idea of how the media should work is.
August 30th, 2006 at 3:17 am
“Israel might just be able to openly attack a mosque with all networks stationed next door and get away with it.”
At least you’re honest about how radically biased your idea of how the media should work is.
August 30th, 2006 at 3:28 am
The “Disproportionate Response” annoyed me most because it seems no one has ever read Sun Tzu’s ‘Art of War’.
In this book Sun Tzu advises that one should never go into battle unless they had superior forces in multiples. (forgive me if my details are a bit innaccurate). Suffice it to say, I completely agree with this part of your comment : ‘The code word “proportionate” really meant, “Israel, you have to limit yourself to fighting at a level that Hezbollah can sustain. Otherwise it’s just not fair!”‘
The next problem was that Israel was pressured to stop the action because there was a tiny chance they could have had a clear victory.
August 30th, 2006 at 7:18 am
A ‘proportionate’ response for Israel would be for them to fire one rocket at random into Lebanon for every rocket fired at random from Lebanon into Israel. Somehow, I don’t see the World nodding its collective head and saying “yes, that’s fine.”
August 30th, 2006 at 7:20 am
Great analysis, SDB, thanks!
(tiny typo: “but hidden forced remained the majority of their force.” >> hidden forces remain it’s just not fair, I really think our fairy tales & myths are missing the Strong, Good King-Hero fighting evil honorless weaklings. Our myths have us supporting the good underdog. And a “fair fight.”
In the lack of such myths, now necessary, we are indeed at the ‘end of history’. We need to write new history, new myths.
I first thought that Lebanon should surrender, and Israel should get an unconditional surrender Victory. But no moral Western country can achieve that today against a guerilla or terrorist force (at least, not until after a terrorist uses a nuke to mushroom Tel Aviv).
Currently I’m thinking Israel almost optimized its defeat. Perhaps the only way Israel can get peace with its neighbor shame-based society Arabs is through defeat; Israeli defeat. Like this Leb war. Peace thru defeat. Declare defeat and accept a Leb Peace Treaty.
I like the newspeak irony of both sides then falsely claiming victory, when: Defeat is Victory.
August 30th, 2006 at 8:07 am
bunkerbuster,
What about office towers?
Yes, if they the enemy makes use of them. Where did you get the idea that any class of buildings is immune from attack?
The Geneva Convention places the obligation to protect civilian lives and special buildings like hospitals and museums on the party in the conflict that has boots on the ground in the area. Warring parties mutually protect specific buildings by carefully taking care not to station military assets in or near the buildings. They protect civilians buy evacuating them from potential targets.
Thanks to people like you, Hezboallah and similar groups have absolutely no incentive to protect civilian lives or infrastructure because you will lay all deaths and all destruction at the doorstep of their enemies.
August 30th, 2006 at 8:27 am
DJ quoted Buchanan:
/Start
If Israel is not in violation of the principle of proportionality, by which Christians are to judge the conduct of a just war, what can that term mean? There are 600 civilian dead in Lebanon, 19 in Israel, a ratio of 30-1, though Hezbollah is firing unguided rockets, while Israel is using precision-guided munitions.
/End
Um, this is primarily a function of the Israelis trying to see that their citizens weren’t hurt, while the Hezbollah went out of their way to make sure that someone else’s citizens were deliberately put in harms’ way.
John
PS: SDB, you are sorely, sorely, sorely missed.
August 30th, 2006 at 9:42 am
IDF Captain Dan Gordon at Jewish World Review make the point that the Israelis gave Hizballah a proper mauling but missed out in the propaganda aspect.
August 30th, 2006 at 10:45 am
One thus-far unanswered question is how rapidly and how thoroughly Israel can apply the lessons learnt in this conflict to future action against Hezbollah and its proxies. I think one of the most important things they have to take on board is the need to get inside the news cycle, and that means sudden, overwhelming combined-arms attack (shock and awe if you will) in order to gain a significant military foothold before the anti-Semitic world media can ramp up their propaganda machine. Fortunately Western armies can and do learn quickly from failure (it’s a much more effective driver of doctrinal evolution than success).
Another point that this episode underscores is what an utter catastrophe was the incapacitation of Ariel Sharon at this time. Olmert has to go, and I think a robust purge of the IDF General Staff is needed, too.
August 30th, 2006 at 11:39 am
Perceptions of this war are changing. There is a lot of backpedaling going on in Lebanon at the moment, making these declarations of victory seem quite empty. Although I share the conviction that the Israeli’s most likely missed some opportunities due