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Thursday, 10 Aug 2006
Hezbollah called in Imad Mughniyeh to command the soutehrn front. He is described as the islamic movement most regarded field commander, wanted for the USa embassy in Lebanon bombings, and is the one person that has both the trust of Khemeini and Bin Laden.
Israel in turn called in Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinski to handle its nortehrn front. The dude is aninfantry man, a war veteran, and was head of the recon unit in the first Lebanon war. He knows this region and fought Hezbollah before.
Hmm….
This is about to get brutal, isn't it?
August 10th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
it already was brutal. But it may actually be about to get worthwhile - particularly if Mugniyeh is captured or killed. If he is actually being sent to the south it’s a strong indication that Hezbollah - for all their brave statements - knows that it is losing this war. And with Israel gearing up for a massive ground assault, they actually have a chance to take Mugniyeh down (something they would never have been able to do from the air). His loss would be quite the hammer blow to Hezbollah, and might actually make the Israeli goals achievable. As long as he and Nasrallah stayed away from the fighting, I didn’t think that was possible.
In my opinion sending Mugniyeh to the south is a major tactical mistake by Iran.
August 10th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
Yaaaay there’s gonna be blood and guts spilling everywhere… Wohoo I can’t wait man!
*puking*
Good night me going to sleep. I’ve got Knowledge Management class 2moro early morning. Good luck to Hezbollah and IDF. Have a greet messy battle. May the best “man” win!
ZzzzZzzzzz
August 10th, 2006 at 2:40 pm
I thought HB’s effectiveness was due to a minimum of central command. Small units jumping in and out of well entrenched cover attacking Israeli’s when the opportunity presents itself.
Israel on the other hand could really use some imaginative and bold strategies to get this over with as quickly as possible for all concerned. This plodding, half-assed march from the south has been a tragedy and disaster for everyone, especially the Lebanese. There is or was a story on either Israel Isider or the Jerusalem Post about how a massive lightning strike plan, involving a paratrooper assualt right at the Litani River, was nixed. How foolish.
August 10th, 2006 at 2:58 pm
“I thought HB’s effectiveness was due to a minimum of central command. Small units jumping in and out of well entrenched cover attacking Israeli’s when the opportunity presents itself.”
Against a well coordinated, well equiped and well led conventional force, this type of warfare isn’t really ‘effective’ (if you define effective as actually achieving tactical goals as opposed to just killing the enemy). Consider the Viet Cong - while initial contact with this irregular force worked to their advantage, the US Army was eventually able to counter their methods and became quite capable of denying the VC of any tactical victory. When the VC tried to conduct operations on a larger scale (see Tet Offensive) they were crushed.
The IDF have reverted to a ground offensive which is really what they should have been doing in the first place. There would have been less media victories for Hizb since ground warfare is pretty immediate (ie you don’t have to wait 10-20 min to get a jet scrambled to where recon pinpointed a launcher).
Hindsight is 20/20 - we’ll just have to wait and see how this pans out.
August 10th, 2006 at 3:50 pm
“The IDF have reverted to a ground offensive which is really what they should have been doing in the first place. There would have been less media victories for Hizb since ground warfare is pretty immediate (ie you don’t have to wait 10-20 min to get a jet scrambled to where recon pinpointed a launcher).”
Exactly. It also minimizes the media victories of civilians killed by misplaced bombs; civillians killed in a firefight with Hezbollah members are just as tragic but less abhorrent a media spectacle, if only because the presence of Hezbollah fighters becomes undeniable and accusations of “targeting civillians” untenable.
August 10th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
Re the Viet Cong:
It was effective enough to make us leave in the long run. Note, too, how Olmert’s government has down-shifted from disarming Hezbollah to a negotiated peace that implicitly leaves them with power. When was the last time they said Hezbollah must be disarmed?
August 10th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
Hebollah planned to make this brutal. They place a command post in an embassy and in a hospital, store weapons underneath houses, run lines to mines through a town’s water pipes, fire rockets from behind mosques, store munitions in mosques, fight their way into Christian villages in order to fire rockets from among the homes of people who have opposed them, ….and scream loudly about the Israelis “targeting civilians.”
We know who’s targetting civilians, here.
August 10th, 2006 at 6:39 pm
By the Gods, I hope it will become brutal. Unless Hizballah are totally and completely annihilated, this battle is lost; and this little battle just might be the decisive one in the greater war of the yet-free people against rising Islamist horror. If we lose, these yet-free people will get that much closer to becoming slaves.
And you cannot make an omlette without breaking eggs - civilians will die, stuff will be blown up, there will be much lamentation and gnashing of teeth. But if it doesn’t happen, there will be same and worse a million times over.
And EW - today.
August 10th, 2006 at 7:17 pm
“It was effective enough to make us leave in the long run.”
Again - it depends on how you define effective. It is considered a watershed moment for public opinion yes, but tactically the VC never recovered from the offensive. They were virtually eliminated as a fighting force after Tet. Even after we left, it took the north 2 years to finally take Saigon and the south.
So … what I think the west needs to take from this lesson is this: Let the IDF bloody the bully to a pulp. Don’t stop the fight until the bully says he is sorry. That is the only way the bully will learn and possibly see the error of his ways. If we stop the fight now, when the bully isn’t so bloody, then he will just use the time gained to lick his wounds and devise another strategy.
August 10th, 2006 at 7:54 pm
Israel does not seem to have had the poltical will to do what it takes to really bloody them, although I have no doubt HB has been battered badly.
August 10th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
And that’s the rub really - will mounting political pressure, both inside and out, force Israels hands. Will the images comming out of Lebanon alter the mindset of the average Israeli enough to have them out in the streets demanding and end to the operation? I hope not. I hope they have hardened their hearts and are willing to let their leaders do what they must. I hope that the Knesset allows the IDF generals to fight the war they want to fight.
While the suffering that is currently being endured by the civillian populace on both sides is lamentable - the potential suffereing of their children and their children’s children needs to be taken into account.
August 10th, 2006 at 8:13 pm
Allah O Akbar!
August 10th, 2006 at 8:54 pm
people in israel are cought in a nostalgy wave for ariel sharon. “if sharon was priminister, we would have ended this war 4.5 weeks ago, destoryed hizballa and wouldn’t loose a single soldier in the process”. I heard this sentence in diffenet variations for more times than I can remmember in the last weeks.
people are naive, I guess.
August 10th, 2006 at 8:56 pm
Hezb’allah would love to fight ala Viet Cong. Instead they must fight like the Japanese at Iwo Jima . They are in fortified bunkers. They can’t get resupplied and cant maneuver. They have no military objectives. All they can do is wait for Israelis to come for them and try to kill as many possible.
August 10th, 2006 at 9:38 pm
Nadav - the chief difference between Sharon and Olmert is that Sharon had a spine and testicles. And now is the time for leaders with these bits of anatomy, not hesitant jellyfish like Olmert and bewildered Communist nobodies like Peretz.
Of course, he had by far too many failings; but in wartime, I’d rather have Sharon as my leader than Olmert.
August 10th, 2006 at 9:59 pm
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August 10th, 2006 at 10:32 pm
If the world don’tget a cease-fire things will be very very nasty, and many will die. Did you know that they are recalling soldiers from Russia that fought in Gaza but there they were sent off because they had a “happy trigger”, funny isn’t it?
August 10th, 2006 at 10:35 pm
Mughniyeh needs to be assassinated. Even more so than Nasrallah.
August 10th, 2006 at 11:28 pm
That would be a major blow to Iran and seriously I doubt it will happen.
*wonders what happened to the previous “commander” of the south
August 11th, 2006 at 1:33 am
Mugniyah is wanted by the American FBI:
http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/termugniyah.htm
August 11th, 2006 at 5:07 am
“This is about to get brutal, isn’t it?”
Just a guess, but it will probably be one-sided. If there was a Vegas line on it (which there probably is) I would bet the house on Israel. Two weeks from now it will look like “stalingrad” on T.V. and in a month it will be clear that Israel pwned the enemy. (just a guess)
August 13th, 2006 at 8:17 am
“ABOUT to get brutal?”
Then how the hell would you have described it thus far? A walk in the park? A squabble among friends?
It’s always BEEN brutal…