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AliEnvy said:


I have no doubts about that whatsoever. However, Iraq has demonstrated the effectiveness of a strong insurgency against the biggest badass military of them all.

Hezbollah was bound to take their shot at it as well and I'm sure Israel was waiting and prepared for even the slightest provocation.

If they have underestimated Hezbollah's capabilities the way the US underestimated Iraq...and so far that seems very possible...then we are headed down a long, very ugly road.

Really? Has the insurgency driven the coalition in Iraq out of the country? Has the insurgency won any battles you can name? Has the insurgency been successful in denying the coalition access to any piece of Iraq? Was the insurgency successful in preventing the elections in Iraq? Was the insurgency successful in preventing the development and passing of a constitution? Has the insurgency successfully prevented the development of Iraq's first true democratically elected government?

Iraq was going to go through a long and difficult nation building process with or without an insurgency. The insurgencies true strength is really only its ability to survive by hiding behind the civilian population. It has made things incredibly difficult and costly, but has not prevented Iraq from progressing foward from where it was in April 2003. As with any nation building anti-insurgency operation, the operation Iraq will take many more years, but in terms of cost, it is far from being the most violent and costly operation the United States or other coalition members have been involved in. The British army lost 5 times as many soldiers in the early 1970s in Northern Ireland than they have lost in Iraq. The United States lost 25 times as many troops in Vietnam.

But Iraq is a very different matter in many ways than Hizbollah and Lebanon. First, its unlikely that Israel is going to invade and take over Lebanon and embark on a nation building anti-insurgency operation as the coalition is doing in Iraq. Certainly, they could do that if they felt it was the only way to insure their security, but its most likely that they will go for a buffer zone in the south devoid of any civilians. Such a buffer zone would remove 98% of the rocket threat to Israel, and prevent the incursions into Israel by Hezbollah fighters. It would also create an environment where Hezbollah would have to fight Israel essentially in the open because there will be no civilian population that it could use to hide behind or blend in with when conducting their operations.

With Hezbollah weakened and Isolated, the international community could attempt negotiations that could possibly lead to the disarmament of Hizbollah, a UN force to occupy the buffer zone created by Israel, and the withdrawal of the IDF from Lebanon. Then the development of the Lebanese government and economy could get under way. Of course, if negotiations fail, Israel can continue to occupy the buffer zone indefinitely, under conditions far more favorable than the occupation of 1982-2000.
 
AliEnvy said:


The buffer zone is a great idea...but so was ousting Saddam Hussein.

If that can be accomplished without a prolonged occupation and strong insurgency, that is absolutely ideal. But my feeling is that Hezbollah is deliberately sucking Israel futher into a web at its own timing and choosing.






Unable or unwilling? Another big attack by al-Qaida on the west right now (particularly the US) would just create solidarity. Right now the divide and conquer approach is working pretty well for them so they're not going to randomly mess with it. Look beneath the rhetoric.

Divide and conquer approach? Its questionable how much of Al Quada really exist any more, except for the loosely affliated groups. They have been unable to launch any attacks at all on the United States since 9/11. I don't see any evidence that they have been unwilling to attack anyone as they often claim that they are involved in any act of terrorism that happens on the planet as a way of showing they are still a major factor.
 
capt.sge.upy95.280706043216.photo00.photo.default-371x512.jpg

Rice, wearing a red dress and pearls, was in a sombre mood after her crisis trip to the Middle East and decided to stick to the concert-grade piano skills she mastered at college.
Rice took the stage by storm with a piano recital of a Brahms sonata, titled a Prayer for Peace.

good to see the Bush Administration is pulling out all the stops.
 
AliEnvy said:


I have no doubts about that whatsoever. However, Iraq has demonstrated the effectiveness of a strong insurgency against the biggest badass military of them all.
No, it has illustrated that the perception of a conflict shapes it not the reality - the US cannot loose militarily in Iraq, it is a virtual impossibility but given the nature of the national mood and the very strong will towards isolationism from a variety of quarters political defeat is quite possible.

The insurgents are much better at killing people in markets and mosques than trying to kill armed soliders.
 
STING2 said:
Really? Has the insurgency driven the coalition in Iraq out of the country? Has the insurgency won any battles you can name? Has the insurgency been successful in denying the coalition access to any piece of Iraq? Was the insurgency successful in preventing the elections in Iraq? Was the insurgency successful in preventing the development and passing of a constitution? Has the insurgency successfully prevented the development of Iraq's first true democratically elected government?

Those might be your measures of success/failure but I don't think really address the goals of the (leaders of the) insurgency...which are basically to keep the area completely unstable with a US occupation to 1) continue recruiting efforts for their "resistence movement", 2) keep the US military stretched and ensure continued strain on the global economy, and 3) to continue to keep the global community (and US for sure) divided over the why's and how's.

From that standpoint, they are doing what they intended so can be considered successful so far.
 
deep said:



good to see the Bush Administration is pulling out all the stops.

If I was an Israeli, a Palestinian or a Lebanese person, I wouldn't want this administration anywhere near the Middle East. Everything they touch turns to shit.
 
STING2 said:
Divide and conquer approach? Its questionable how much of Al Quada really exist any more, except for the loosely affliated groups. They have been unable to launch any attacks at all on the United States since 9/11. I don't see any evidence that they have been unwilling to attack anyone as they often claim that they are involved in any act of terrorism that happens on the planet as a way of showing they are still a major factor.

Of course there's no evidence that they are unwilling to attack lol. Their strength and true purpose lies in the threat (for now).

For the past 5 years while the world focused on eliminating al Qaida, Hezbollah quietly grew stronger and stronger. Now the opposite will happen...and they've both created it that way.
 
A_Wanderer said:
[No, it has illustrated that the perception of a conflict shapes it not the reality -

Exactly...and as long as it is perceived that the US doesn't have absolute control of what is happening in Iraq, the more momentum can be gained for the "resistence" inside and outside of Iraq.

The insurgents are much better at killing people in markets and mosques than trying to kill armed soliders.

That's all they need to do to be successful toward their bigger strategy.
 
STING2 said:


Really? Has the insurgency driven the coalition in Iraq out of the country? Has the insurgency won any battles you can name? Has the insurgency been successful in denying the coalition access to any piece of Iraq? Was the insurgency successful in preventing the elections in Iraq? Was the insurgency successful in preventing the development and passing of a constitution? Has the insurgency successfully prevented the development of Iraq's first true democratically elected government?



the insurgency has been successful in making sure that the new government doesn't actually govern anything and in creating an Iraqi Civil War that Colin Powell, David Frum, Peter Galbraith, and many other former neocon cheerleaders all acknwoledge exists. further, the insurgency is funded and fueled by Iran, much like the Viet Cong were funded and fueled by China and Russia. Baghdad will soon likely slide after Basra into the unofficial new Iranian empire. it's another proxy war of attrition, and we've lost again.

here's some interesting analysis:

[q]I spent a total of seven months in Lebanon recently, and I never could quite figure out what prevented the country from flying apart into pieces. It barely held together like unstable chemicals in a nitro glycerin vat. The slightest ripple sent Lebanese scattering from the streets and into their homes. They were far more twitchy than I, in part (I think) because they understood better than I just how precarious their civilized anarchy was. Their country needed several more years of careful nurturing during peace time to fully recover from its status as a carved up failed state.

By bombing all of Lebanon rather than merely the concentrated Hezbollah strongholds, Israel is putting extraordinary pressure on Lebanese society at points of extreme vulnerability. The delicate post-war democratic culture has been brutally replaced, overnight, with a culture of rage and terror and war.

What is happening in the Lebanon is a tragedy for the Lebanese, a horrible - and terrifying - conundrum for the Israelis, and a disaster for US policy in the wider struggle against Islamic extremism. And, oh yes, it is not, unfortunately, going to bring an end to Hezbollah...

“What will become of us?” is the question on everyone’s mind. No one can know what will happen after Israel lifts its siege and the temporary national unity flies apart into pieces. And it will fly apart into pieces. The only question is how far the pieces will fly and how hard they'll land.

http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001203.html

[/q]


ultimately, it doesn't matter how many tanks and troops the Israeli military has. Israel is a democracy, and Israelis are not prepared (nor should they be) for a prolonged and bloody re-occupation of Lebanon that will not guarantee security and is akin to the Little Dutch Boy putting his finger in the dyke. isn't it clear, at this point, that occupation is simply not a solution. it creates far more problems than it solves. it breeds long-term radicalization while providing only a modicum of short-term security.

it's quite clear that these military actions are simply not going to bring an end to Hezbollah, only an effective, centralized, empowered Lebanese government would be able to do that.
 
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‘Consistently, from the Hizbollah heartland, my message was that Hizbollah must stop this cowardly blending… among women and children,’ Mr Egeland said. ‘I heard they were proud because they lost very few fighters and that it was the civilians bearing the brunt of this. I don’t think anyone should be proud of having many more children and women dead than armed men. We need a cessation of hostilities because this is a war where civilians are paying the price,’ said Egeland as he headed to Israel.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1228713,00.html

p.s. to irvine, good to see that you are reading Michael J. Totten, please check out some of his reportage from Iraq and a citation wouldn't be to far amiss - plagarism is not cool :wink:
I spent a total of seven months in Lebanon recently, and I never could quite figure out what prevented the country from flying apart into pieces. It barely held together like unstable chemicals in a nitro glycerin vat. The slightest ripple sent Lebanese scattering from the streets and into their homes. They were far more twitchy than I, in part (I think) because they understood better than I just how precarious their civilized anarchy was. Their country needed several more years of careful nurturing during peace time to fully recover from its status as a carved up failed state.

By bombing all of Lebanon rather than merely the concentrated Hezbollah strongholds, Israel is putting extraordinary pressure on Lebanese society at points of extreme vulnerability. The delicate post-war democratic culture has been brutally replaced, overnight, with a culture of rage and terror and war. Lebanon isn't Gaza, but nor is it Denmark.
link
A very telling passage in thatlatest article
Israel and Lebanon (especially Lebanon) will continue to burn as long as Hezbollah exists as a terror miltia freed from the leash of the state. The punishment for taking on Hezbollah is war. The punishment for not taking on Hezbollah is war. Lebanese were doomed to suffer war no matter what. Their liberal democratic project could not withstand the threat from within and the assaults from the east, and it could not stave off another assault from the south. War, as it turned out, was inevitable even if the actual shape of it wasn’t. Peace was not in the cards for Lebanon. Its democracy turned out to be neither a strength nor a weakness. It was irrelevant.

Holding up as a democracy in a dictatorial region isn’t easy. Chalk this up as yet another thing Israel and Lebanon have in common with each other that they don’t have in common with anyone else in the Middle East -- except, perhaps, for the Kurds in Northern Iraq. Unlike Israeli democracy, though, Lebanese democracy may not have the strength to keep breathing. Already some right-wing American "realists" are suggesting Syria return its forces to Lebanon. (Bashar Assad may be as much a foreign policy genius as his late father.) The March 14 Movement, the Cedar Revolution, may be too weak to survive until the region as a whole is transformed. If the Lebanese, the Americans, and the Israelis are not wise in the coming days, weeks, and months it could die the same death as the Prague Spring in the late 1960s, crushed under the treads of Soviet tanks and smothered until the day the world around it had changed.
 
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A_Wanderer said:
And what do you think that larger goal is?

Slow, steady and controlled growth of their resistence (terrorist) movement toward the creation of a united, Islamic republic in the region.
 
A_Wanderer said:
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1228713,00.html

p.s. to irvine, good to see that you are reading Michael J. Totten, please check out some of his reportage from Iraq and a citation wouldn't be to far amiss - plagarism is not cool :wink:




fair enough. we read, we amass facts, we try to provide our own analysis, and we do the best we can in a very shorthand forum that really can't be held to the same standards as academia, especially when things are thrown together in the pauses in a workweek and we blend together what we read with what we already know, but i've gone back and edited the post.
 
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BEIRUT, July 27 (Reuters) - Along Lebanon's sandy beaches and rocky headlands runs a belt of black sludge, 10,000 to 30,000 tonnes of oil that spilled into the Mediterranean Sea after Israel bombed a power plant.
Lebanon's Environment Ministry says the oil flooded into the sea when Israeli jets hit storage tanks at the Jiyyeh plant south of Beirut on July 13 and 15, creating an ecological crisis that Lebanon's government has neither the money nor the expertise to deal with.

"We have never seen a spill like this in the history of Lebanon. It is a major catastrophe," Environment Minister Yacoub al-Sarraf told Reuters.
 
AliEnvy said:


Those might be your measures of success/failure but I don't think really address the goals of the (leaders of the) insurgency...which are basically to keep the area completely unstable with a US occupation to 1) continue recruiting efforts for their "resistence movement", 2) keep the US military stretched and ensure continued strain on the global economy, and 3) to continue to keep the global community (and US for sure) divided over the why's and how's.

From that standpoint, they are doing what they intended so can be considered successful so far.

1.) The US occupation of Iraq prevents insurgence from achieving their objectives. Their goal is to force a premature withdrawal by convincing the US public at home that the policy is a failure and staying is pointless. It is the only way they can succeed in getting the US out of Iraq since they don't have the military capability to remove the United States from the country.

2. The Iraqi insurgency has not grown since April of 2004. Instead succeeding increasing the overall number of insurgents, many insurgents are in talks with the government to stop fighting, disband, and join the government.

3. The United States has a total of 88 Combat Brigades. Only 17 of those combat brigades are stationed in Iraq. The vast majority of US ground combat strength is still ready for deployment to any crises in the world.

4. The global economy is doing very well, and the US economy is currently the strongest it has ever been in its 200 year history with the exception of the last two years of the Clinton Presidency.

5. The global community is typically always divided to some degree on the issues of the day. Its true that in Iraq, the insurgents have indeed been successful in convincing many people that they are succeeding and that the US mission is a failure, but this has more to do with their propaganda strategy then any real achievments on their part. Aside from continuing to fight, and kill innocent people, the insurgents have achieved NOTHING and have not prevented Iraq from continue to move forward.
 
anitram said:


If I was an Israeli, a Palestinian or a Lebanese person, I wouldn't want this administration anywhere near the Middle East. Everything they touch turns to shit.

Sure, thats why Saddam's regime, the only regime in the region to invade and attack four different countries unprovoked, threaten the planets energy supply with siezure and sabotage, use wmd more times than any leader in history, has been removed from power and a democratic government put in place. Same with Afghanistan, the Taliban and Al Quada have been removed and a developing democracy has replaced it.
 
AliEnvy said:


Of course there's no evidence that they are unwilling to attack lol. Their strength and true purpose lies in the threat (for now).

For the past 5 years while the world focused on eliminating al Qaida, Hezbollah quietly grew stronger and stronger. Now the opposite will happen...and they've both created it that way.

Its not as if the world only has resources to deal with one or the other. There will not be any change to the pursuit of Al Quada because of anything that Hezbollah does.
 
AliEnvy said:


Exactly...and as long as it is perceived that the US doesn't have absolute control of what is happening in Iraq, the more momentum can be gained for the "resistence" inside and outside of Iraq.



That's all they need to do to be successful toward their bigger strategy.

Since the Iraqi insurgency has not grown since April of 2004, that is far from being the case. In addition, most of the resistence in Iraq comes from Saddam loyalist and former members of Saddams Republican Guard.
 
STING2 said:

Same with Afghanistan, the Taliban and Al Quada have been removed and a developing democracy has replaced it.

Oh yeah, the Taliban and al Qaeda are gone!

Presumably to the same place as bin Laden?

You have an exceptional way of seeing only what you want to see, STING.

From The Weekly Standard:

RECENT EVENTS in Afghanistan, notably the temporary seizure of the Afghan towns of Garmser and Naway-i-Barakzayi, have once again provoked a wave of speculation concerning a renewed Taliban offensive. The ability of the Taliban and their allies in al Qaeda and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-e-Islami to organize such attacks suggests that they have succeeded at establishing a new safe haven--in northern Pakistan.

Contrary to the optimistic pronouncements of the Pakistani military, the Taliban and their al Qaeda allies have been able to establish control of a broad swath of territory across northern Pakistan, particularly in the Waziristan region that was described to Newsday by American and Afghan officials in February 2006 as "the primary engine of the continued Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan."
 
STING2 said:
1.) The US occupation of Iraq prevents insurgence from achieving their objectives. Their goal is to force a premature withdrawal by convincing the US public at home that the policy is a failure and staying is pointless. It is the only way they can succeed in getting the US out of Iraq since they don't have the military capability to remove the United States from the country.

My point was they don't want the US out of Iraq. Furthermore, Bush doesn't want to leave Iraq either.

2. The Iraqi insurgency has not grown since April of 2004. Instead succeeding increasing the overall number of insurgents, many insurgents are in talks with the government to stop fighting, disband, and join the government.

This is great news that we should be hearing more about...yet we're not...why is that? Maybe sources are not that credible.

3. The United States has a total of 88 Combat Brigades. Only 17 of those combat brigades are stationed in Iraq. The vast majority of US ground combat strength is still ready for deployment to any crises in the world.

So? The financials are staggering.

4. The global economy is doing very well, and the US economy is currently the strongest it has ever been in its 200 year history with the exception of the last two years of the Clinton Presidency.

It is a house of cards and if oil approaches $100 a gallon it will knock out the bottom card.

5. The global community is typically always divided to some degree on the issues of the day. Its true that in Iraq, the insurgents have indeed been successful in convincing many people that they are succeeding and that the US mission is a failure, but this has more to do with their propaganda strategy then any real achievments on their part. Aside from continuing to fight, and kill innocent people, the insurgents have achieved NOTHING and have not prevented Iraq from continue to move forward.

The US invaded Iraq against the wishes of the global community. Israel/US will not consider a ceasefire against the wishes of the global community. Chances are, the US will again go it alone against Iran in the not too distant future when nuclear talks stall further.

The Bush administration is preoccupied with power, domination and narrow economic interests.

After all this blatant rejection of the global community, if that $100 per gallon of oil transpires into a global depression, the political climate could change dramatically in the West against American interests.
 
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