Let us not play with words: It was a defeat.
Ehud Olmert declared three objectives to the war. The return of his soldiers, the disarming of Hezbullah, and the removal of the Hezbullah threat to Israel. None of these objectives was achieved. Israel suffered its greatest-ever PR loss as the world insisted that Hezbullah—which is made up mostly of Lebanese citizens—was not a part of Lebanon, and that Lebanon shouldn’t suffer because of Hezbullah’s actions. The world insisted that Israel must levy a “proportionate” response. The world is now handcuffing Israel’s attempts to defang Hezbullah (admittedly lame attempts, but attempts nonetheless).
So what have Israel’s enemies learned?
Here’s what the palestinians learned.
The Palestinian terror organizations are looking north and are filled with satisfaction and hope for the next step.
“We learned from Hizbullah that the tools that make a difference are missiles. If achieve expertise in this field, we won’t make do with the simple rockets we have. There is no doubt that we can subdue Israel ,” Abu Nasser, a commander in the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Fatah’s military wing, told Ynet.
“Since the Gulf War, missiles were what brought Israel to the negotiation table. The withdrawal from Gaza was also a result of missiles. If we use them correctly in the West Bank, we will get rid of the IDF here too,” Abu Nasser explained.
Here is what the Syrians learned.
On the heels of what it views as a Hizbullah victory against the Jewish state, Syria is forming its own Hizbullah-like guerilla organization to fight Israel in hopes of “liberating” the Golan Heights, an official from Syrian President Bashar Assad’s Ba’ath party told WorldNetDaily yesterday.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Syria learned from Hizbullah’s military campaign against Israel the past month that “fighting” is more effective than peace negotiations with regard to gaining territory.
He said Syria’s new guerilla force would be trained by Hizbullah leaders.
And here is what the Lebanese learned.
Both sides of the northern border appear to have reverted almost entirely back to routine pre-war realities – including the presence of Hizbullah supporters waving the organization’s flags right in front Metula residents.
Starting Wednesday, residents of the northern town have been seeing Hassan Nasrallah photos and Hizbullah flags right across the border. On Thursday, Hizbullah members joined the party, driving along the fence and flashing “V” for victory. Hizbullah flags have been posted on balconies and at central locations near the border.
And why not? Israel lost over 100 of her soldiers because Olmert wouldn’t approve a ground force, which was needed to uproot the terrorists. Olmert signed a cease-fire agreement that gave him exactly zero of the goals he launched the war for. And the world is still tut-tutting over the poor, pitiful Lebanese, who were completely innocent in this—completely ignoring, once again, the fact that Hezbullah is a Lebanese organization. It may get funding from Iran, but its footsoldiers are the Boys of Beirut (and the little towns around).
Ehud Olmert should step down. But I don’t think he’ll have to. I think that the first time he tries to do anything in the Knesset, a no-confidence vote will sink him. And don’t even get me started on the indefensible Defense Minister. What kind of a moron puts Jimmy Hoffa in charge of the army?
The problem is, who is there who can lead?
Yes that is the problem… who can lead us? Sharon was the last of them, and he’s left us, and with no plan B…
Both Israel and the US need to get very serious, very quickly, about the appropriate anti-missile technologies:
link
also
here.
It is too early to call it a defeat, at least a “complete defeat”. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it is still too early to draw conclusions.
Events like this take a little time to make determinations about.
Yawp!
Anti-missile technology is like solar power… it would be wonderful to have, but there are all those pesky laws of physics in the way. And just saying “we need to do more research” can’t cancel the effects of inertia or momentum.
Which specific laws of physics do you think are in the way of anti-missile technology?
Pretty much everything in Newtonian physics. You’re trying to essentially hit bullets with bullets of your own, and even if the bullets can shoot smaller bullets, it’s still so fiddly that even under carefully controlled conditions, where you know the location from which the missiles are launched and where they are headed, intercepts are only successful 60% of the time. Barring some sort of breakthrough that allows missles to suddenly shed their momentum to change direction abruptly in mid-flight, I just don’t see any way to make a great improvement in that percentage, no matter how much the technology is refined (which usually winds up meaning “more expensive and even more fiddly for little improvement”).
I’d love to be proven wrong, and especially love to see momentum-negating devices developed, but some things just can’t be changed by throwing more money or more scientists at them.
Olmert needs to go and Israel will have to endure some harsh times, but Israel will win in the end !!
There’s no need at all to negate momentum. Missiles such as Scud and Katyusha are ballistic: their future trajectory is entirely predictable from its history.
And in the case of the laser-based system, momentum isn’t a factor at all (except for the angular momentum of the ground-based projection device)
“There’s no need at all to negate momentum. Missiles such as Scud and Katyusha are ballistic: their future trajectory is entirely predictable from its history.”
Not with the precision needed to knock the missile out of the air in mid-flight. Ballistic projection (like almost everything in science, really) produces areas of probability, not exact and precise locations. We can narrow down the projected location and origin of a rocket to an area about two meters radius, with 98% confidence. That’s good enough to determine what building the missile was launched from (and even what room in that building), and good enough that an airplane can drop a bomb on the missile’s estimated origin and destroy whatever’s there (especially if it’s a cluster bomb). But it’s not good enough to stand a very realistic chance of hitting the missile, which occupies maybe 5% of that volume, in the less than 30 seconds it takes to reach its target.
Our detection and computation technology has long passed the point of diminishing returns. We could load each ABM with the equivalent of a supercomputer and a gigawatt radar antenna, and we would only shave a few centimeters off that probability radius.
Lasers offer more promise, but have issues of their own, especially since they can be defeated easily with a light-reflective coating that can be improvised from mylar balloons or even aluminum foil.
Masers would be much more effective, since even when reflected, they induce enormous voltages in metal and explosive compounds that would severely damage a missile, if not destroy it outright, before it reaches its destination. Unfortunately, they are also absorbed by water vapor, and even in the desert there’s more than enough of that to put severe limits on their range. Plus, a baggie filled with water over the nose of the missile would send us back to square one. It would also mess up the missile’s flight path pretty badly, but Hezbollah doesn’t even care if their missiles hit Palestinian cities.
Bottom line, there are so many limits on missile interception technology that the old standby – bomb shelters – are still the most effective and least expensive defense.
Tatter…well, it sounds like Northrop Grumman has a lot of confidence in their laser system…seems to me like DoD should give them a contract, with appropriate performance clauses, to get it into production.
Prior to WWII, the conventional wisdom was the “the bomber will always get through” and that effective defense was impossible. It turned out that with radar (including airborne radar), centralized command-and-control networks, and mechanical and electronic fire-control computers for AA guns, a heavy price could be exacted on attacking bomber forces.
The object of missile defense is not to stop missiles, but to break them.
As for predicting where missiles will be,
the object is not to predict their paths from the start, but to predict their paths from the moment they’re detected.