Winning or Losing in the Middle East?
BY Herschel Smith
18 years, 4 months ago
There are two trains of thought gradually emerging concerning the larger war in the middle east. Israeli PM Ehud Olmert boasts in the superlative:
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called the war “a marvelous combination of military might and civilian strength” in a speech marking the graduation of students at the National Security College in Tel Aviv yesterday. Olmert said Israel is “winning this battle,” and its success is “nearly unprecedented.”
“Even today, it may be said that the face of the Middle East has changed following the great achievement of the State of Israel, of the army of Israel, and of the people of Israel,” Olmert said, speaking without notes.
Also from within the government of Israel:
Justice Minister Haim Ramon, who said that 300 of the enemy’s forces have been eliminated, revealed that IDF sources estimate the total number of Hizbullah fighters to be 2,000. “The objective is to hit the fighters and the weaponry of the Hizbullah,” Ramon told a Channel 10 interviewer, “and so far, we have done a pretty good job.”
The Strategy Page agrees with this assessment:
Israeli ground operations appear to be using paratroopers and other elite infantry to hunt down and kill Hizbollah rocket launching teams. Hizbollah has not got a lot of trained people. Kill them, and they are hard to replace. There are only so many rocket launcher teams. Kill them, and no one will be available to take the rockets out of their hiding places and launch them. Right now, this battle is being won by the Israelis, because Hizbollah has not been able to launch many longer (over 20 kilometers) rockets at more densely populated areas deeper in Israel. Most of the rockets are short range ones. The Israeli attack on the transportation system in southern Lebanon has made it difficult to move large objects, like big rockets, into position for launch.
But there is a different view of the overall war effort in the middle east (including not just Israel and their battle with Hezbollah, but the U.S. and the war in Iraq). The National Review editors say:
The administration hopes to forge a meaningful international force to help the Lebanese army police southern Lebanon. We hope it can. But it may be an unachievable goal, given that countries are unlikely to contribute troops unless the environment is more “permissive
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