View 425 July 31 - August 6, 2006 (original) (raw)
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Monday July 31, 2006
There is or shortly will be a new column segment and mail bag onChaos Manor Reviews. The mail contains some new tips on using command lines.
Remember: if you find this page, and Chaos Manor Reviews, worthwhile, this would be a good time to subscribe. Keeping both these sites going plus writing fiction is a fair amount of work. Thanks to the many who have by subscribing shown me that it is worth the effort.
Sunday's Mail has a letter from LtC. Phillip Pournelle aboard HSV-2 Swift in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Israel's Ordeal
The morning paper headlines tell of the 54 women and children, mostly children, killed in a bomb shelter by an Israeli air strike in Qana. Everyone acts as if the world has come to an end. Israel is roundly condemned. Governments call for an "unconditional cease fire".
I have been critical of Israel and will continue to be; but in this case, one wonders, what should they have done? Hizbollah is controlled by hard and cynical men who would joyfully trade 54 of their own women and children for this kind of publicity, and ten times that many if it would assure a cessation of the Israel offensive. It was no accident that they were using an area near a bomb shelter as their base of operations for firing rockets in the general direction of Israel. The difference between Hizbollah and the IDF is that the IDF generally hits its targets, but sometimes misses; Hizbollah cannot be said to have targets. They just fire their rockets in hopes that they will kill someone, but mostly in hopes of provoking retaliatory strikes that will kill their own people. In Qana they succeeded beyond their expectations; and while the public image will be of Lebanon mourning, you may be sure that if we could get cameras into the Hizbollah command center, you would see rejoicing.
Now the cry is for Israel to stop. Forfeit any gains made. "There can be no negotiations without an immediate and unconditional cease fire," which will, of course, allow Hizbollah to reform and regroup. In a word, Israel is to declare defeat and withdraw. The result will be to encourage Hizbollah to buy more and better rockets. If driven out of the South, the remedy is obvious: buy longer range missiles, find more refugee camps in which to base them, and fire more rockets at Israel. Wait for more IDF counterfire. Be sure the cameras are ready. And win another victory.
Many decry "CNN Victories" as meaningless. Not so. Each Hizbollah "CNN victory" brings in more recruits, and gathers more financial support. Each Hizbollah victory makes it easier to acquire more and better rockets.
Katyusha rockets are not classed as "weapons of mass destruction" only because they have almost no accuracy. They are an ineffective military weapon unless used in great numbers all at once for area bombardment. Otherwise they are merely targetless bombardment weapons. Those who condemn the Allies in WW II for high altitude night bombardment of cities as terror raids should have no trouble in putting Katyusha rockets in the same class, despite their relative ineffectiveness unless used in large numbers. However, they are cheap. They are easily acquired, and in small numbers easily hidden among civilian populations, in mosques, in grocery stores, in living rooms. "Hi Mom, what's for dinner. Oh. We have some new rockets!"
Israel now finds herself caught in the jaws. If they press forward for an actual military victory, dealing death, destruction, and defeat to Hizbollah, they will inevitably give over more "CNN Victories". There will inevitably be more scenes of dead children found in the rubble of bomb shelters. Each CNN Victory will assure thousands of new Hizbollah recruits, some from populations that had previously held Hizbollah in contempt. And at each stage there will be demands that Israel back off, stop the killing, declare an immediate and unconditional cease fire, negotiate: negotiate from a position of defeat, but now a worse position than before. And this will continue until either (1) Israel wins an actual military victory, or (2) Israel can no longer pay the price and face the pressure, which is in fact the most likely outcome.
And winning an actual victory will be very costly, and include a long aftermath of occupation either with conscripts or with paid soldiers hired from, probably, Russia, although there may be some other sources for recruits. Paid soldiers -- also known as mercenaries -- are expensive, if they are any good, and even more expensive if they are cheap but ineffective.
In a word: Israel, like the United States, is faced with the dilemma: Imperium or Republic. The United States has the luxury of hemispheric independence, energy independence, the possibility of withdrawal from the Middle East. Israel does not have that option.
And the options she faces now are stark and unattractive.
I would delight in having someone prove my analysis wrong.
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R. Curry of Tennessee I have your check but not your email address for subscription!
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Even Churchill Couldn't Figure Out Iraq.
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/
printout/0,8816,1220442,00.html
--- Roland Dobbins
I know too little about what is happening on the ground over there; but this doesn't seem an unreasonable analysis. I want it to be wrong. Alas, it's the analysis I had before we ever went in there; what I told what few contacts I had left in the Administration would happen if we did invade.
I do not enjoy being right, and I continue to hope I was wrong. Unfortunately, I have had considerable experience at strategic analysis, and I haven't usually been wrong.
Comments by Colonel Couvillon in mail.
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