Conventional wisdom, including much opinion in Israel and among Israeli supporters in the US, awards Hezbollah the victor's laurels in Lebanon. In the following commentary, Ed Luttwak offers an alternative perspective.

EDWARD N. LUTTWAK
451O Drummond Avenue, Chevy Chase MD 2O815 USA.
Tel. USA [OO1] 3O1 656 1972 Fax USA [OO1] 3O1 9O7 8164
eluttwak@hotmail.com

August 17, 2006

Lebanon 2006: misreading war, once again.

In the immediate aftermath of the 1973 October War, there was much joy in the Arab world because the myth of Israeli invincibility had been shattered by the surprise Egyptian crossing of the Suez Canal, and the Syrian offensive that swept across the Golan Heights . Even unbiased commentators noted the failure of the Israeli air force to repeat its feats of 1967 while losing fully one quarter of its combat aircraft to ground fire, just as hundreds of Israeli tanks were damaged or destroyed by brave Egyptian infantrymen with their hand-carried missiles and rockets. In Israel, there was harsh criticism of political and military chiefs alike, who were blamed for the loss of three thousand soldiers in a war that ended without a clear victory. Prime Minister Golda Meir, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, the Chief of Staff David Elazar and the chief of military Intelligence were all discredited and soon replaced.

It was only later that a sense of proportion was regained, ironically by the Egyptian and Syrian leaders before anyone else. While commentators in Israel and around the world were still mourning or gloating over Israel’s lost military supremacy, both Egypt’s President Sadat and Syrian President Assad soberly recognized that their countries had come closer to catastrophic defeat than in 1967, and that it was absolutely imperative to avoid another war. That lead to Sadat’s peace and Assad’s 1974 cease-fire on the Golan Heights, never violated since then.
Only in retrospect it is easy to read the 1973 war. Israel had been caught by surprise, because perfectly good Intelligence was misinterpreted in a climate of arrogant over-confidence. The frontal sectors, left almost unguarded, were largely overrun. The Egyptians had an excellent war plan and fought well, Syrian tanks advanced boldly, and even where a lone Israeli brigade held out, they kept attacking in wave after wave for three days and nights. Within 48 hours, Israel seemed on the verge of defeat on both fronts. But as soon as its army was fully mobilized, as soon as the reservist brigades that make up nine- tenths of its strength were ready to deploy for battle, it turned out that they could stop both the Egyptian and Syrian armies in their tracks, and start their own advance almost immediately. The war ended with Israeli forces seventy miles from Cairo, and less than twenty miles from Damascus. As for the Israeli air force, its strength over the battlefields was certainly blunted by concentrated anti-aircraft missiles and guns , but its air-combat supremacy prevented almost all attacks by the large Egyptian and Syrian air forces, while itself being able to bomb in depth almost at will. That was the real military balance of the 1973 war, which was obscured by the tremendous shock of surprise, emotional over-reactions, and the plain difficulty of seeing things as they are through the fog of war. .

It is just the same now, with the Lebanon war just ended. Future historians will no doubt see things much more clearly, but some gross misperceptions are perfectly obvious even now.
That even the heaviest and best protected of battle tanks are sometimes penetrated by the latest anti-tank missiles should really not surprise anyone–they cannot be invulnerable, and did well enough in limiting Israeli casualties. Likewise, the lack of defenses against short-range rockets with small warheads is merely common sense. They are just not powerful enough to justify the expenditure of many billions of dollars for laser weapon systems the size of football fields.

More serious misperceptions are equally obvious. For example, instead of dismissing Nasrallah’s boasts, many commentators around the world kept repeating and endorsing his claim that his Hezbollah’s fighters fought much more bravely than the regular soldiers of Arab states in previous wars with Israel.
In 1973 after crossing the Suez Canal, Egyptian infantrymen by the thousand stood their ground unflinchingly against advancing 50-ton Israeli battle tanks, to attack them successfully with their puny hand-held weapons. They were in the open, flat desert, with none of the cover and protection that the Hezbollah had in their stone-built villages in Lebanon’s rugged terrain. Later, within the few square miles of the so-called “Chinese farm” near the Suez Canal, the Israelis lost more soldiers fighting against the Egyptians in a single day and night than the 116 killed in a month of war in Lebanon-- including the victims of vehicle accidents and friendly fire. Even in 1967, the best Israeli troops lost 37 killed in four hours to take less than a mile of trenches in Jerusalem’s Ammunition hill. The defending Jordanian infantry kept fighting till the end, even though they were greatly outnumbered and encircled from the start.
The Hezbollah certainly did not run away and did hold their ground, but their mediocrity is revealed by the casualties they inflicted, which were very few. When an Israeli recce company attacked the mountain town of Bin Jbail losing eight men in one night, that number was perceived in Israel and broadcast around the world as a disastrous loss. Many a surviving veteran of the 1943-1945 Italian campaign must have been amazed by this reaction. There too it was one stone-built village and hilltop town after another, and though the Germans were outnumbered, outgunned and poorly supplied, a company that went against them would consider the loss of only 8 men as very fortunate, because attacking forces could suffer a 150% or even 300% casualty rates--that mathematical impossibility being explained by the need for a second, third or fourth assault wave to take a small village. Even that was not much as compared to the 6,821 Americans who died to conquer the eight square miles of Iwo Jima. The Hezbollah should not of course be held to such standards , but on the whole they did not fight as fiercely as the Egyptians in 1973 or the Jordanians in 1967-- as Israeli casualty figures demonstrate.

What is perfectly true is that the Israelis lacked a coherent war plan, so that even their most purposeful bombing came off as brutally destructive (though with a deterrence payoff, as Syria’s immobility showed) , while the ground actions were hesitant and inconclusive from start to finish. There was a fully developed plan of course in the contingency folders -- a sophisticated blend of amphibious,.airborne and ground penetrations to swiftly reach deep behind the front, before rolling back, so as to destroy Hezbollah positions one by one from the rear, all the way to the Israeli border.

That plan was not implemented because of the lack of casualties among Israeli civilians . It had been a fair assumption that thousands of Hezbollah rockets fired in concentrated barrages would kill many civilians, perhaps hundreds of them each day. Barrages cancel out the inaccuracy of unguided rockets, and powerfully compound blast effects . That would make a large-scale offensive by more than 45,000 soldiers a compelling necessity, politically justifying the hundreds of casualties that it would certainly cost.

The Hezbollah , however, distributed its rockets to village militias that were very good at hiding them from air attacks, sheltering them from artillery and from probing Israeli unmanned air vehicles, but quite incapable of launching them effectively, in simultaneous launches against the same targets. .

Instead of hundreds of dead civilians, the Israelis were therefore losing one or two a day, and even after three weeks, the grand total was less than in some one-man suicide bombings.
That made it politically unacceptable to launch the planned offensive that would kill young soldiers and family men, while not eradicating the Hezbollah anyway, because it is a political movement in arms, and not just an army or a bunch of gunmen.

For that very reason, the outcome of the war is likely to be more satisfactory than many now seem to believe. Hassan Nasrallah is not another Arafat, who was fighting for eternal Palestine and not for actually living Palestinians, whose prosperity and safety he was always willing to sacrifice for the cause. Nasrallah has a political constituency, and it happens to be centered in southern Lebanon. Implicitly accepting responsibility for having started the war, Nasrallah has directed his Hezbollah to focus on rapid reconstruction in villages and towns, right up to the Israeli border. He cannot start another round of fighting that would quickly destroy everything again. Yet another unexpected result of the war is that Nasrallah’s power-base in southern Lebanon is now a hostage for Hezbollah’s good behavior .

In response to Dr. Luttwak's commentary which was published in the Jerusalem Post: I don't believe that anyone has made a serious argument that the outcome of Lebanon II demonstrated that Israel has lost its military superiority. It's certainly difficult to make that case with regard to a military power armed with nuclear weapons (a fact that probably explains to some extent why Egypt made its historical decision to end its war with Israel after 1973). The point is that we need to measure the military and political outcome of this war against the military and political goals that had been enunciated by Olmert and Halutz, more specifically, the destruction of Hizbollah's military infrastructure mainly through the use of air power. That didn't happen (see the pasted editorial from the Economist which makes this and similar points). Also while the Israeli military response to Hizbollah's attacks may have served as a deterrence, it seems to me that unless Hizbollah is fully disarmed, etc. it is now in a position (especially if it will continue to receive more supplies from Iran and/or Syria) to deter Israel through the threat of launching the rockets it still has in its arsenal.
Overall if you analyze the outcome of the Israeli-Arabs wars since 1948, in most of them Israel had won military victories (including the 1982 Lebanon War but not in the First Intifadah.), but has failed to achieve its ultimate political goals of reaching peace with the Arab neighbors. Ironically, while Israelis make the argument that the Arabs "only understand force," the fact of the matter is that Israeli decision to make territorial concessions that led eventually to peace accords came after wars (1973 and the First Intifadah.) in which the Arab side while clearly not achieving a military victory, ended up doing better than expected on the battlefield (Sinai and Golan in 1973; the West Bank and Gaza after the First Intifadah.).
On a personal note: I really have to take issue with Dr. Luttwak's following point: "That was the real military balance of the 1973 war, which was obscured by the tremendous shock of surprise, emotional over-reactions, and the plain difficulty of seeing things as they are through the fog of war. ." Real wars as opposed to war games that are fought with tanks and not in think tanks end up with the loss of human life. Israel lost in 1973 thousands of its best and brightest, including some of my relatives and personal friends and ended up withdrawing from parts of the Sinai and the Golan in exchange for a cease-fire. Yes, eventually that opened the road to the Egyptian-Israeli peace talks. But in retrospect exchanging whole of the Sinai for a peace agreement with Israel was something that Israel could have achieved through diplomatic negotiations before 1973. That conclusion doesn't reflect "emotinal over-reactions" but hard-core realism. It seems to me that the Lebanon II was driven on the Israeli side by the same kind of trust in the military people to "get things done."

Leon Hadar

Lebanon and Israel

Nasrallah wins the war

Aug 17th 2006
From The Economist print edition


Bad news all round, especially if more of Israel's neighbours come to believe in Hizbullah's methods

AFP
HASSAN NASRALLAH and Ehud Olmert both say they won. But in asymmetrical warfare, the test of victory is asymmetrical too. Israel's prime minister set himself an absurd aim—the complete demolition of Hizbullah's power in Lebanon—and failed to achieve it. The shrewder Mr Nasrallah said victory would consist merely of surviving, and Hizbullah, however battered, did survive. On the last day it was not just standing, it also fired a record 246 rockets into Israel.

Hizbullah being what it is, Mr Nasrallah lost no time claiming that this was “a strategic, historic victory”; crowds in Tehran chorused that Israel had been “destroyed”. Did Hizbullah not kill 159 Israelis, including 116 Zionist soldiers? Israel being what it is, Mr Olmert's political foes lost no time denouncing the prime minister's failings as Israelis sank into a collective despond about the disappointing showing of their army and the blunting of their country's long-term deterrent power.

Mr Olmert, echoed by George Bush, says that Israel won because it has transformed Lebanon. Under Security Council Resolution 1701, which brought the fragile ceasefire, Hizbullah is to withdraw north of the Litani river, make way for the Lebanese army plus a strengthened UN force, and disarm. That would, Israel says, put an end to Hizbullah's “state within state”. And so it would—if it happened. But it may not. Within days of the ceasefire, Mr Nasrallah said it was “too early” to discuss disarming. Syria's president, Bashar Assad, said so too. And the likelihood of the Lebanese army or a UN force trying to disarm Hizbullah against its will is zero. Two years ago, the UN passed a splendid resolution, 1559, demanding the disarmament of all militias in Lebanon. If Hizbullah did not comply then, why should it do so now, flushed with self-declared victory and with Israel's army still inside Lebanon?

Lebanon could lose too
The plain fact is that if Hizbullah is ever to give up its weapons and become just another political party, it will be through the pressure of the other Lebanese, not as a direct result of Israel's war (see article). The diplomacy should therefore not be built on the pretence that Israel won a war it didn't. The more that Israel and America claim otherwise, the less able the caught-in-the-middle Lebanese government of Fouad Siniora will be to extract favours from Mr Nasrallah. A better idea would be to deprive Hizbullah of the pretexts it has invented for keeping up its war. It would be useful, for example, if Israel gave up the Shebaa Farms, the bit of Syrian territory Hizbullah says is Lebanon's, and accepted a prisoner swap.

However, Israel needs to save face too. Mr Olmert has no interest in concessions that reinforce the idea that he led his warrior nation to defeat. Israelis feel they dare not let their country look weak. And now come ominous signs that it does. Mr Assad has started talking again about liberating the Golan Heights. Having previously denied arming Hizbullah, Iran this week started to boast about the weapons it sent. If Israel is to give up Shebaa at such a time it must have something big in return, such as the actual removal of Hizbullah's arms—not just their concealment—in the south at least. Since America is not seen as an honest broker, closing such a deal may well require some new mediator. France? Turkey? Germany? Without an agreement, the war could resume at any moment.

When will they ever learn?
If a deal is done, what lesson will Israel take from this war? Probably something along the lines of: more infantry, fewer tanks. Those who preach sagaciously from afar that Israel should learn something bigger—the necessity of making peace instead of relying on force—have not been paying attention.

The hubris that blinded Israel after its great victory of 1967 cleared decades ago. Since the 1980s at least two prime ministers, Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak, gave their all in the search for peace. The first paid with his life and the second with his job. Even the hawkish Ariel Sharon budged. He pulled Israel out of Gaza and knocked the legs from under Israel's settler movement. The trouble for Israel is that in peacemaking, as well as in war, the enemy gets a vote. What the well-meaning protesters (see article) who have been marching in Europe in praise of Hizbullah refuse to acknowledge is that today, as in the 1940s, Israel still has some neighbours who continue to deny its very right to exist as a Jewish state.

This is not to say that Israel is blameless. It has made mistakes aplenty down the years. This war was probably just that: a mistake after a provocation and not a plot cooked up either by Israel and America against Iran, or by Iran against Israel and America, as the rival conspiracy theories go. It followed a bigger blunder: Israel's failure after Yasser Arafat's death to work seriously with his moderate successor, Mahmoud Abbas.

But peace does not depend only on Israel. Six years ago Israel withdrew from Lebanon to a border painstakingly demarcated by the UN. Hizbullah fought on anyway. Like Iran, it says its aim is Israel's destruction. Though an authentic political movement with a domestic agenda in Lebanon, it is also blatantly anti-Semitic. Mr Nasrallah once reflected that collecting the Jews in Palestine made them easier to wipe out. Its al-Manar TV station is a beacon of hate: one series purported to show Jews murdering Christian children to use their blood for Passover bread. Whether Hizbullah and Iran seriously propose to destroy Israel is hard to tell, but it is what they keep saying—and they have imitators. The Palestinians' ruling Hamas movement has not yet dared to say out loud that it accepts even the principle of sharing Palestine with a Jewish state.

Following Mr Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza, Mr Olmert hoped to follow his example by uprooting Israeli settlements from much of the West Bank. Hizbullah has now killed stone dead the idea of Israel giving up territory again without cast-iron security assurances. So there will be no leaving any of the West Bank until there is a deal. Israel must find some way to re-engage with the Palestinians. But right now it is not even talking to Hamas—and Hamas, after the Lebanon war, is in danger of subscribing anew to the old illusion that Palestine can be liberated by force. Black days ahead for the Middle East.


w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Last update - 10:18 18/08/2006
Not Sparta - and just as well
By Doron Rosenblum

When Israel embarked on Lebanon War I, one of its secondary aims was said to be "to heal the trauma of the Yom Kippur War." And what will heal us from the trauma of Lebanon War II? In this regard, there is almost complete consensus - only the next war. Yes, it is always the next war - the redeeming, corrective war that restores our "honor" and defines us until the war thereafter.

Lebanon War I began on June 5 - and not by chance: This is attributed to the melodramatic historical sense of then prime minister Menachem Begin, who saw it as some kind of an allusion to the date of the start of the Six-Day War - the queen of all our wars. That stunning (alas, one-time) victory that they remembered neither lets up nor gives rest, a victory that has been seeping since then into the national bloodstream like a toxic drug. Toxic, because nothing during the past 40 years even came close to the glory of those six days in the summer of 1967 (okay, except for the Entebbe operation and the triumph in the Eurovision song contest), yet we are living in its shadow and are not letting go of the longing for its return.

The roots of the failures of this war - the excessive ease with which it began, the arrogance and scorn for the enemy, the conceit and mystical belief in the power of the air force - can also be explained as distant by-products of those "three hours in June" 40 years ago. And it is not by chance that the smoking embers that now remain symbolize this - the hubris of a chief of staff like Dan Halutz and the myth of the all-powerful, haughty and arrogant air force in which he wrapped himself.

In any case, the tremendous Katyusha barrages that landed on Israel for an entire month are already beginning to diminish in the face of the barrages of self-torture, reciprocal floggings and accusations - barrages that no cease-fire will halt and will continue for years no doubt. Make room, therefore, on the shelf for the trauma of Lebanon War II - the third volume in the trilogy (so far), a continuation of the Yom Kippur War and the "War for the Peace of the Galilee."

But before we "investigate" and decapitate the leaders who have disappointed, and without exempting them from their responsibility, one must nevertheless remember: The haste, the wild gambling with human lives and the shoddy planning that accompanied this war did not arise in a vacuum and did not stem from some mental disturbance reserved exclusively for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Halutz. They were not the only ones who were deceived into thinking that they had in their hands an all-powerful tool that is replete with gadgets - the Israel Defense Forces and the air force - and can be put into operation and stopped by pressing a button, when the main thing is the fact of the desire to operate it and not the concern for its operation.

And indeed the semi-messianic slogan, "Let the IDF win," was, and is still, despite everything, the demesne of most of the Israeli public. No empirical proof, not even repeated bereavement and failure, have shaken the naive belief that somewhere out there is a huge, mystical, redeeming victory that failed leaders are preventing from taking place.

This longing, which reduces all of our existence to military bullying, does not stop at the country's borders: Of all the barrages of blame and disappointment that are falling on us after the war, the most annoying are the ones that are coming at us from the direction of our "friends" and "well-wishers" from the United States - those politicians and article-writers, Jews and others, who are clicking their tongues in disappointment at our performance on the battlefield and are even starting to wonder whether the investment of billions of American dollars is not being wasted on a hapless ally like us.

But to both those who send us into battle in order to derive joy from our performance, and those among us who are thoroughly depressed by the results of the war, it must be said: Comfort, comfort, my people. With all the acute importance of military might, Israel cannot be solely a derivative of victories or tactical defeats on the battlefield. Its existence is far richer and far more meaningful and varied than that.

If the Israeli mentality is "inferior" to that of Hezbollah, Iran and Hamas in that it does not seek suicidal death, the virgins in Paradise and genocide for its neighbors; if Israel has pity on the lives of its sons, on its comfort, on the nurturing of its landscapes and even on bed and breakfasts, wineries and the pleasures of life, it is nothing to be ashamed of. On the contrary: We shall proudly bear our weaknesses as fragile, vulnerable human beings.

Israel is not Sparta, and this is a good thing. It was not established in order to be a spearhead against global Islam, or in order to serve as an alert squad for the Western world. It was established in order to live in it. And after the obvious is stated - with respect to the importance of might and strength - this too shall be said: Unlike some of its enemies, Israel has a far more means of existential solace - in vitality, culture and in creativity - than the planting of a flag of victory among the ruins.