Power and Control: A Shorter Aftermath
Power and Control: A Shorter AftermathAt Power and Control, M. Simon argues that Israel really won the war, but is in trouble because it did not perform up to expectations.
I think there's more to it than that. While I have no doubt that we inflicted more damage on Hezbullah than they inflicted on us, the problem is that we went to war for a reason and we set out specific goals that we did not accomplish. The goal wasn't 'take out most of Hezbullah's rockets.' It was get our soldiers back and destroy Hezbullah's military capability completely. We did neither of those.
Had the war continued for another month, would we have accomplished our goals? Possibly. But if we had fought the war
That's why people here say 'we lost.'
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:50 AM
1 Comments:
This post says: "Had the war continued for another month, would we have accomplished our goals? Possibly. But if we had fought the war in a smarter manner, we could have accomplished them within the month that we fought, if not sooner."
I think there is a lot of truth in that. However, it is unlikely that Israel could have accomplished it's goals with a purely military solution. But, the diplomatic approach Olmert persued would have had a much better chance of success if Israel had done significantly more damage to Hezballah before the diplomats were allowed to do their work.
The Israel Misistry of Foreign Affairs gives their goals:
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/About+the+Ministry/Behind+the+Headlines/Israels+counter+terrorist+campaign+-+FAQ+18-Jul-2006.htm
The MFA FAQ says, "The purpose of the Israeli operation was two-fold - to free its abducted soldiers, and to remove the terrorist threat from its northern border.
Israel understood from the outset that although military operations were necessary to defend its citizens by neutralizing the threat posed by Hizbullah’s terrorist infrastructure, the eventual solution would indeed be diplomatic.
The components of such a solution were as follows:
# the return of the hostages, Ehud (Udi) Goldwasser and Eldad Regev;
# the effective deployment of the Lebanese army in all of southern Lebanon;
# the expulsion of Hizbullah from the area, and
# the fulfillment of United Nations Resolution 1559.
# the preservation of IDF gains in removing Hizbullah from the border region
# the elimination of the Hizbullah long-range missile threat
# the prevention of Hizbullah’s re-arming by closely monitoring of the possible routes into Lebanon from Syria or elsewhere (an arms embargo)."
Many of these goals could only be accomplished by diplomatic means. It would be impractical for Israel to impose them by force because it would require a never ending occupation of Lebanon to monitor the borders, and prevent Hezballah from reconstituting and rearming.
With Hezballah left in a position of strength, the diplomatic solution is not likely to work. Hezballah is still strong enough to intimidate the government of Lebanon. If Israel had done more to destroy Hezballah, the Lebanese government would be able to secure it's borders and prevent Hezballah from reforming and rearming.
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