“Position to dictate truce terms”? If you win, there is no truce, only a surrender, which you get to dictate to the loser. There is a truce only if you fail and can at best achieve a tie. Which means more of the same later.

Well, name one war Israel ever really won, then. Israel never wins by the conventional definition. She just survives long enough to fight some or all of the same enemies all over again.

Meryl, you wrote:

“Um. Did you all read the entire article?”

My point was that Damascus is the pressure point of the Hezbollah forces in those villages Israel shouldn’t have to overrun if she brings enough pressure to bear….

while leaving the leadership in a position to dictate truce terms

is what bothers me. The leadership seems as much in charge as a dog being taken for a walk. The dog appears to be in front, but only because it is constantly checking to see where the master wants to go. That sentence says that the people “in charge” of the government are not leaders and are only interested in saving their own position.

Also, trying for a “truce” means that they will be left with the same situation as 1948, and 1973.

I read the whole article, and this sentence (which you quote) really jumped out at me:

“Israeli concern, then, is for preserving the ability to win “asymmetric” conflicts decisively enough to avoid casualties on a scale that would sap support for the citizens’ army, while leaving the leadership in a position to dictate truce terms.”

If we take that at face value as accurate, the Israeli government has already given in to political correctness, which is a sure fire way to lose. Win just decisively enough to limit casualties so that you don’t “sap support for the army”? Excuse me, but if you give up support for the army, you all die. Don’t they realize that? Apparently not.

“Position to dictate truce terms”? If you win, there is no truce, only a surrender, which you get to dictate to the loser. There is a truce only if you fail and can at best achieve a tie. Which means more of the same later.

When will they get decent leadership over there? Clearly they need another Golda Mier (Meryl, I think there’s a job for you waiting to be filled).

Yes, I did read the whole article.

I believe the IDF has been training hard. I believe they’ve been doing their best to train realistically. I believe that they’re better prepared for the tactics they’re going to face than they were a year ago.

What I don’t believe is that they’ve managed to improve enough.

Look at the bit of the article you quoted: “division-strength units have practiced overrunning enemy posts and villages.” This sounds to me like a training scenario for a classic large-scale combat action conducted by fire and maneuver, where an enemy is beaten by driving him away, and troops can quickly secure conquered territory before moving on.

But guerilla wars aren’t fought with division-size units. They’re fought with squad, platoon, company, sometimes battalion-size units. And we ourselves have spent the last four years proving that it isn’t possible anymore to really secure territory in the face of a hostile local populace. What will one of these divisions do the first time it “overruns” a village and finds only women and children, no fighting-age men at all? Will it consider the place ‘secured’ and move on, while the fighting men come out of their bunkers and start sniping at the IDF forces from behind? Will it leave a “security force” tasked with trying to track down and kill the fifty or a hundred two- or three-man mortar and rocket and IED teams that pretend to be peaceful villagers one day, and slip out to snipe at the occupiers the next? If the IDF is really training to fight a conventional armored war against Hezbollah, then the result will be the same as it was last year, and the same as the first two years of the US experience in Iraq: a long bloody drawn out struggle in which their own population’s will to win will be sapped by a slow and steady drip, drip, drip of casualties, while the enemy seems to remain as strong as ever no matter what measures the IDF takes.

Believe me, I want to believe that you’re right, and the IDF will blow the Palis into very small pieces, as they so richly deserve. But when I read that article with a skeptical eye, I simply don’t see much reason for optimism there. Frankly, I’m reduced to hoping that the reporter didn’t know jack about what he was seeing and hearing, so he bungled the report and the real situation is very different.

These issues have been addressed, and the IDF has always set the standard for asymetrical warfare, as long as it had the materiel.

Does the enemy want to lose its ability to resupply Hizballah and Hamas? If not, it cannot allow Syria to become involved in fighting on any level.

More interesting than speculating on a multi-front war is what Israel plans to do about Hamas before that war can break out.