Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of US ground forces in Iraq April 12, 2004
"Israel is determined to continue on in the fight against Hizbollah. We will ... stop them. We will not hesitate to take severe measures against those who are aiming thousands of rockets and missiles against innocent civilians for the one purpose of killing them,"
Ehud Olmert, Israeli Prime Minister, July 2006
***
In August of 2004, American forces under Lt. General Sanchez launched a full scale assault on Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army, then massed in Najaf.
Reportedly, hundreds of Mahdi fighters were killed which, considering the Americans' command of overwhelming firepower (and the Mahdi's lack of combat experience), was a completely unsurprising outcome.
And yet, despite producing significant losses, Washington's objective to, in so many words, vaporize al Sadr and neutralize his organization proved beyond reach.
At the time, University of Michigan Prof. Juan Cole described the Mahdi's structure as being like the “layers of an onion”. One layer could be heavily damaged or destroyed but this wouldn't kill the organization as a whole. Distributed groups such as the Mahdi, with both centralized and decentralized command and control elements, are, the Americans have re-learned, extraordinarily resilient and able to recover from all but the most extreme forms of military punishment (thermonuclear ordinance comes to mind as “most extreme”).
***
Tel Aviv's unfolding assault on Lebanon is designed, we're told by both Israeli and American officials, to destroy Hezbollah's war fighting capacity, cajole (read: terrify) Hezbollah's Lebanese supporters into rejecting the organization, motivate its domestic opponents to take more drastic steps (read: civil war) to neutralize the group as a force and convince its foreign supporters in Iran and the Arab world to cut it loose.
Israeli Air Force commanders were confident, it seems, that a punishing air campaign (a classic 'total war' scenario in which civilians are considered targets because of their role in supporting combatants) would simultaneously deal strategically fatal blows to Hezbollah and eliminate their civilian support network.
Now that IDF ground forces are engaging Hezbollah fighters in combat – and taking losses in both equipment and men – the failure of the campaign's strategic component is being revealed.
Indeed, at the moment it appears unlikely Israel will achieve any of its main objectives (perhaps shattering the Lebanese economy was an objective – if so, that's largely been accomplished but beyond this criminality...).
Both Washington and Tel Aviv wage classic 'big war' military campaigns: aerial bombardment, followed by ground incursion – a French derived tactic fashioned during the First World War. The Israelis have added so-called “targeted assassinations”, kidnappings and other 'special operations' to their bag of military tricks but in the main, as we're seeing right now in Lebanon's smashed towns and villages, there's a devout faith in the effectiveness of large-scale force deployments to accomplish political and tactical goals.
But modern warfare has evolved beyond the point where states are able to decisively destroy competitors and establish systems more to their liking in place of deposed governments.
This is partly due to advances in portable killing technology – devices such as shoulder launched anti tank and anti aircraft launchers – that give out-gunned teams of fighters unprecedented amounts of firepower.
Mostly however, it's the result of the distributed structure of the non and quasi-state organizations Washington and Tel Aviv confront.
Having smashed the Iraqi state and failed to create a viable replacement, the Americans find themselves facing a variety of well-armed, difficult to isolate groups, each with a base of popular support (some more than others, of course). Everything from ex-Baathist military professionals to ruthless Jihadis and gangsters roam Iraqi streets, killing anyone who opposes or displeases them. In this chaotically violent situation it's impossible to impose your will on more than a very limited amount of territory (US bases and the Green Zone are the examples that come to mind).
Similarly, Tel Aviv, having long denied the Palestinians autonomy in the occupied territories (indeed, occupation itself, along with the 'security barriers' and bantustans that come with it is, by definition a denial of independence) and frustrated Lebanese politics has not evolved in a direction to its liking is trying to suppress resistance to its objectives by punishing the populations supporting its non-state adversaries.
Instead of smothering resistance, such wanton destruction only tends to make it grow.
Washington and Tel Aviv are unable to alter course and will continue to use their overwhelming military power to force events, as best they can, into desired paths.
The outcomes won't change. As their plans routinely fall into disarray, they will become more dangerous, upping the ante of force employed (other options, such as honest negotiation will not be seriously considered).
Washington and its Israeli client pose a great – and growing - threat to global stability. The more defeats they suffer, the more unpredictable they're likely to become.
.d.
--------- She loves penicillin...and compromise. She's going to go for it
...................... http://monroelab.net/blog/