Lebanon on the brink

[Prime Junta]

While I won't deny a fair bit of stupidity in the US leadership (we've established that long ago), there's a very key modification to what you're saying that's needed: "We WERE too nice to them". Once you're into the cleanup phase (we've been there for a few years now), the ballgame changes entirely.

Even looking at your satelite photos, we're not asking the right question. How is it that there's no change to the city below that east-west highway? Are they actually stupid enough to believe there aren't any "bad guys" south of the road? Bull. There was a political decision made that the "bad guy" density south of the road wasn't sufficient to offset the international outcry against civilian casualties. If you're looking at a true military solution, flattening a square mile in the middle of a city is a waste of time at best, and counterproductive (as you point out) at worst.

As I said -- the only way you can "beat" an insurgency from the air is by going nuclear and killing *everybody*. Lebanon is a tiny but densely populated country. In order to destroy Hezbollah from the air, you would have to drop a significant fraction of your nuclear arsenal on it, so that there wouldn't be a live cockroach in the entire country, plus of course do the same to Damascus and any other areas where they have bases. The fallout would wipe out Israel and the Palestinians at the same time, though.

Whether you can call that a "win" is a bit debatable though, in my opinion, and it certainly isn't practical.

Conventional weapons won't do it. There are too many survivors even with saturation bombing.

 

[Prime Junta]

Agreed, POLYGON, but's that why I pointed out that hit-n-run isn't nearly as effective if there's nowhere to hide.

But there's *always* somewhere to hide -- again, discounting the nuclear option.

The only way you can effectively reduce the number of hiding spots is by having enough boots on the ground. The rule of thumb is that you need 10 regulars for every insurgent.

Consider a puddle of water. If you step in the puddle, the water moves away, but it returns as soon as you lift your foot and nothing changes. Now, stomp in that same puddle a few times. It's a lot more messy, but after a few splashes, the puddle doesn't hold as much water and often fragments into many smaller puddles which are easily navigated. As an alternative, you can knock down the edges (infrastructure) that retain the puddle first. That makes it easier when you do your splashing, since it's less likely the water you've splashed will be funneled back into the puddle.

 

[Prime Junta]

More running commentary: this might be interesting to some of our American readers, not that there's anything really that new about it.

[ http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&article_id=92001&categ_id=17 ]

And another one that's has an angle that I haven't run across before:

[ http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=17&article_id=91883 ]

 

[magerette]

Good read Prime J

The lessons of his cumulative, enormous and continuing misdeeds are bountiful, and offer rich study material for his successor. The single most important one is that if you primarily use foreign armies to rearrange the political furniture of distant lands with their own histories and values, you will fail spectacularly, every time, with absolute certainty. American triumphalist apologists, neoconservative desperados, and allied intellectual airheads will argue Bush's rationales for years, with the same result: disdain and rejection from much of the world, and the hope that real American values will rear their fairer heads when this policy and morality masquerade is mercifully laid to rest and retirement.

 

[dteowner]

........................

How does this merit an eyeroll? Seemed like a remarkably valid metaphor to me, incorporating many of the points you've made about sectarian issues as well as the disperse-n-return nature of insurgencies.

As far infrastructure destruction being hooey, I seem to remember a guy pointing out that mere control of the Beirut airport had a major impact on the availability of arms to Hezbollah. If said airport were to suddenly transform into a large hole, that's going to have an impact. Read your own posts.

 

[Prime Junta]

How does this merit an eyeroll? Seemed like a remarkably valid metaphor to me, incorporating many of the points you've made about sectarian issues as well as the disperse-n-return nature of insurgencies.

Let me put it this way: insurgencies are more like tar pits than puddles.

As far infrastructure destruction being hooey, I seem to remember a guy pointing out that mere control of the Beirut airport had a major impact on the availability of arms to Hezbollah. If said airport were to suddenly transform into a large hole, that's going to have an impact. Read your own posts.

Read more carefully. The political equation has to shift first. They only need the airport if arms shipments by land over the Syrian border are cut off, which they aren't. Not yet.

What's more, we weren't discussing Hezbollah on this side-track: we were discussing American warfare in Iraq, namely, your claim that you're not winning there because you're too nice to bomb them into the stone age. If you take a peek at the map, you'll find that Iraq shares long and poorly patrolled land borders with Syria and Iran. That means that any militia that is supported from one of these countries won't need things like airports or railway lines for supply; their rockets can be shipped in farmers' trucks, hidden under the tomatoes.

To get back to Lebanon, Hezbollah is rather interesting and rather rare in that it combines characteristics of a regular and an irregular army. It fields heavy weaponry, wears uniforms, has a centralized command-and-control network, and has strategically significant missile and anti-shipping capability. You can degrade this capability with conventional-warfare techniques. I only know of two other non-state armies today that have similar capabilities: FARC in Columbia and Liberation Tigers Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka.

However, at its core it's still an irregular, guerrilla army, reliant on tight integration with and support from its base. The conundrum is that if you attack its conventional infrastructure -- like Israel did in 2006 -- you will simultaneously strengthen support for its unconventional side. And degrading conventional military capability from the air isn't as easy as it sounds either: supply lines (such as that airport) are most vulnerable, but if an army has significant stockpiles it'll be able to weather even a pretty extended bombing campaign.

PS. These photos aren't mine; they're off various sources on the Net. I'm not *that* pally with the Hezbollah; I've only been inside their territory a few times, and didn't feel comfortable enough to take pictures.

 

[V7]

I think that analysis is a little overwrought. Granted Bush has made some fundamental ‘never get involved in a land was in Asia’ mistakes but you could characterise the last century of American foreign policy as rearranging the political furniture of distant lands and while there’s been some pretty spectacular failures there’s also been successes.

edit- refering to M's quote

 

[magerette]

I don't know, I can't think of any post WWII successes, V7, using a "foreign army." Japan is always used as a positive example, but that is surely a very unique success due as much to the adaptability and cohesion of the Japanese people.I suppose you might point to the NATO Bosnia intervention, but I don't know how fully fledged a success that is considered; you probably have a better grasp than me.

 

[Prime Junta]

I don't know, I can't think of any post WWII successes, V7, using a "foreign army." Japan is always used as a positive example, but that is surely a very unique success due as much to the adaptability and cohesion of the Japanese people.I suppose you might point to the NATO Bosnia intervention, but I don't know how fully fledged a success that is considered; you probably have a better grasp than me.

There's Gulf War I, the only unqualified military strategic success America had since WW2. Even that didn't really rearrange things, though, rather than restore a status quo ante and subsequently contain a rather nasty dictatorship (albeit at huge humanitarian cost).

 

[magerette]

It may have been successful in strategic goals, but that very aura of success is part of why the next "phase" was made to seem palatable, and indeed, inevitable by Bush II. So I suppose, subjectively speaking, the "unfinished business" motif makes me see it as linked to the current fiasco too strongly for it to get a positive from me at this point in time.

While we're digressing into the morass of Bushland, for those who may mercifully have missed it, here's the latest gaffe from him:
Bush: I Gave Up Golf for the Troops.

 

[zahratustra]

Hey, let's not forget glorious invasion of Grenada!

 

[Prime Junta]

It may have been successful in strategic goals, but that very aura of success is part of why the next "phase" was made to seem palatable, and indeed, inevitable by Bush II. So I suppose, subjectively speaking, the "unfinished business" motif makes me see it as linked to the current fiasco too strongly for it to get a positive from me at this point in time.

There's always unfinished business. The unfinished business in WW1 led to the rise of Hitler and WW2, the unfinished business in that led to the Cold War, which gave us Korea and Vietnam, which gave you the trauma you had to make up for with Gulf War 1, which you had to finish with Gulf War 2, leaving you pretty much where you started post-Vietnam, only with lots and lots of corpses along the way. I wish you'd just see a good shrink, it'd be so much easier for the rest of the world. Or possibly an exorcist.

While we're digressing into the morass of Bushland, for those who may mercifully have missed it, here's the latest gaffe from him:
Bush: I Gave Up Golf for the Troops.

Yeah, well, he definitely needs an exorcist. Plus better handlers.

 

[GothicGothicness]

Bush: I Gave Up Golf for the Troops.

Much better if he said I gave up gulf for the troops.

 

[magerette]

Much better if he said I gave up gulf for the troops.

Spot on, my friend.

 

[Pladio]

Is there any response from International Sunni Movements ? (Not from the countries' governments, but from Muslim Organizations of sorts?)

 

[Prime Junta]

Which ones? The Sunnis aren't like Catholics; there is no single international movement that speaks for them. Lots of prominent non-Lebanese Sunni religious leaders or groups have made statements, though, for all they're worth. For example, here's the Muslim Brotherhood statement.

[ http://www.ikhwanweb.com/Article.asp?ID=17007&LevelID=1&SectionID=70 ]

 

[Prime Junta]

Well, it looks like the government formally revoked the two boneheaded decisions that sparked this round of boxing, so I suppose this is a good time to draw up an interim score card. There are a lot more losers than winners on it.

Biggest loser: Lebanon. It'll be a while 'til they get the tourist trade back, after this little show. It's re-established its reputation as the only country in the world where you can go for a swim in the sea in the morning, go ski on the mountains in the afternoon, and come back to the capital for some urban warfare in the evening.

Big loser: Walid Jumblatt And His Druze Militiamen. (Did you know there was a London blues group of that name?) His fighters were routed, he was reduced to begging for his life through his worst rival, and the consensus appears to be that he's the designated scapegoat. If he has any sense (which he doesn't), he'll retire to Mukhtara to lick his wounds, and attempt another comeback in a year or two, if he lives that long.

Big loser: the Sinioura government. They've made it clear that they're unable to resolve the political crisis gripping the country, or indeed prevent it from sliding into civil war. They're basically lame ducks, and the sooner they step down the better. Shame, that -- his heart is in the right place. I would really have wanted them to succeed.

Loser: the Hariri clan and their Mustaqbal movement. The Sinioura government is their party, and it's over. That means they're well on their way to the opposition. Perhaps they'll do better there.

Loser: Western interests and the USA. The Sinioura government and the Hariri boys are our guys in Lebanon. They're down, we're down.

Loser: Saudi Arabia. The Hariri clan are their guys too, and they lose with them.

Loser: Hezbollah. The government overplayed their hand with those dumb decisions, but so did Hezbollah. A week ago, they had a lot of sympathizers and even supporters among Sunnis and Christians as well as Shi'ites. Those ranks have been thinned a lot. The political pressure for them to disarm is far stronger now than pre-crisis, both internally and internationally, and they're a lot more isolated. Their heroic aura among non-Lebanese, non Shi'ite Arabs will also have dissipated: they suddenly got a stark reminder that the Hezb is a Shi'ite sectarian group close to Iran, not a representative of the Arab world's glorious resistance against Zionism.

Loser: Michel Aoun and his Free Patriotic Movement. His policy has been predicated on the assumption that Hezbollah will behave itself and evolve into something of a normal political party. It didn't. This means that the bottom sort of fell out of his platform. He'll invent a new one in no time flat, though, so his was a comparatively minor loss.

Loser: Iran. Hezbollah's freedom of movement will be much more constrained now, and Iran's influence goes with it. For Iran, Hezbollah is a pistol pointed at Israel, and now that its attention is focused inside Lebanon, it's a lot less useful as a pawn on the Middle Eastern chessboard.

Winner, with qualifications: Hezbollah. They lost on the political side, but they reminded everybody just who runs the show in Lebanon. That means that it looks a lot like they'll get what they wanted when it comes to the new government and responsibility in it. It may turn out to be something of a Pyrrhic victory, though, given their position in the "Loser" column above. We'll see what happens next.

Winners, with qualifications: Talal Arslan and Wiam Wahhab. Druze politics is something of a zero-sum game, which means that if Jumblatt is down, Arslan and Wahhab are up. However, I'm 100% certain that the Hezbollah parade march invasion of the Druze heartland seriously pissed off people there. This means that once the dust settles, the positions could reverse quite quickly.

Winner: Samir Geagea. He's Aoun's main rival, and managed to keep away from the fray rather nicely, despite his connections to the government. Maronite politics are like Druze politics too: what Aoun loses, Geagea wins.

Status unknown: Amin Gemayel. On the one hand, he profits from Aoun's loss, but he's also tainted by the government's failure. Jury's very much out on this one.

Big winner: Michel Sleiman. The army came out of this smelling like a rose, and Michel Sleiman is looking more presidential by the day. (Weird how that can happen simply by doing essentially... nothing.) Let's hope he gets elected quick and he uses some of that political capital to hammer through some sort of national unity government/accord; in fact, IMO that's pretty much the last, best hope for the country.

Biggest winner by far: Israel. Hezbollah will have its hands full with the internal situation for the foreseeable future, so they won't be worrying about any yellow-and-green Katyushas, or kidnappings, either. And all without lifting a finger. This was definitely the best 60th birthday present Israel could ever hope for under these circumstances. (It's this sort of unintended consequence that sparks all the conspiracy theories in the Middle East -- Hariri's movement already insinuated that Israel provided cover to Hezbollah for its maneuvers against the government. Wouldn't that be a trip?)

I wonder what the result of the next round will be. This isn't the status quo ante; it just looks like it. The rules have changed, the power relations have shifted, and we're entering unknown territory. Let's just hope that it'll be chess rather than boxing for more than just a few days, weeks, or months.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

In principle there has happaned what I had feared all of the time:
Instability of the Lebanon as a political push forward to gain more power in the fight against Israel.

The Lebanon is planned to become a major "bidge-head" for Iran and Syria in their fight against Israel.
In my eyes, they are not at all interested in political stability of the Lebanon, and are constantly trying to cripple and criush that wherever possible.

Even worse, ALL sides are NOT AT ALL interested in healthy lives of the cizizens. They are considered just pawns on the chessboard of so-called "great politics".

In my eyes, from THAT perspective, ALL sides are evil - against the "small man".

 

[Prime Junta]

In principle there has happaned what I had feared all of the time:
Instability of the Lebanon as a political push forward to gain more power in the fight against Israel.The Lebanon is planned to become a major "bidge-head" for Iran and Syria in their fight against Israel.

In that case, this round was a complete failure -- Hezbollah can't attack Israel if it's embroiled in an inter-Lebanese power struggle. As of last Friday, it's effectively off the table as a regional player.

 

[Pladio]

I have read several articles now, but almost in none, have I seen anyone condemning Hezbollah except for the US and Saudi Arabia...

They sieged officially elected politicians' home and no one says anything ? They aren't disarming and are more powerful than ever with this show of force. No one in Europe is saying anything about this ?