A recap and analysis of last year's war on Lebanon.
From a very respected writer, readers.
"Book Faults Israeli Air War in Lebanon" by STEVEN ERLANGER
JERUSALEM, Oct. 13 — A study of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war commissioned by the United States Air Force and to be published this month concludes that Israel’s use of air power was of diminishing value as the fight dragged on because it was used without enough discrimination.
Although the war was widely criticized in Israel and abroad for relying too heavily on the air force, the study argues that air power remains the most flexible tool in fighting groups like Hezbollah, because ground forces alone could not have achieved Israel’s aims. Israel’s error, the study concludes, was insufficient discernment in its airstrikes.
[Or its bomblets and Willie Pete?
But no problem flattening the place, right?]
By bombing too many targets of questionable importance for its aims, and not explaining why it bombed what it did, Israel lost the war for public opinion, according to the author of the study, William M. Arkin, an expert in assessing bomb damage. “Israel bombed too much and bombed the wrong targets, falling back upon cookie-cutter conventional targeting in attacking traditional military objects,” Mr. Arkin wrote. “Individual elements of each target group might have been justified, but Israel also undertook an intentionally punishing and destructive air campaign against the people and government of Lebanon.”
[In other words: a WAR CRIME!!!!!!!]
In this new kind of warfare against terrorism, fighting a nonstate force like Hezbollah that occupies a large part of a fragile state, Lebanon, the battle for public opinion is as important as any military victory, Mr. Arkin argues.
This kind of war, using air power and special operations, will dominate the future, which is why the Air Force commissioned this study to learn from “the first sustained precision air campaign mounted by a country other than the United States,” he said in a telephone interview this week.
[Then fuck this world. Who the hell will want to live in it?]
Mr. Arkin’s book, “Divining Victory: Airpower in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War,” will be published this month by the Air University Press, based at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. It is expected to influence Air Force strategy and teaching.
While critical of how Israel used its air force, Mr. Arkin defends the flexibility of air power in counterterrorism. Although Israel was retaliating for a Hezbollah raid that captured two soldiers and killed others, he considers the war pre-emptive. He said Israel used the raid as a pretext to destroy most of Hezbollah’s longer-range Syrian and Iranian missiles and launchers, which posed the largest threat to Israel.
[So why were the Israelis captured on the Lebanese side, and why don't the shit Zionist war dailies tell you that, reader?]
In a post-9/11 world, Mr. Arkin said, the likelihood of the United States’ engaging in another ground war like Iraq is very small. A better model is the fight against the Taliban in 2001, he said, emphasizing air power, special operations and covert action. The 2006 conflict was only the second war of “pure counterterrorism,” he said, which is why the Pentagon wanted to study it.
[Yeah, USrael's wars aren't AGGRESSIVE or anything.
I am so sick of USrael exceptionalism!
Fuck you guys! I hope you fry in hell!]
Having examined the results of the war on the ground and from satellite photos, Mr. Arkin has strong criticism. He says that a more restrained use of air power on more carefully chosen targets would have been more effective in reaching Israel’s strategic goals and would have reduced the sympathy for Hezbollah. Israel was far too quiet about defending target choices, in the attacks and afterward, he said.
[Like any of this would have mattered.
EVERYONE in the WORLD SAW IT FOR WHAT IT WAS: ISRAELI AGGRESSION and WAR CRIMES, sir!
No matter how much you try to dress it up if P.R. rhetoric!
WE ALL KNOW it was ISRAELI MURDER!!!!!!!!!]
Capt. Noa Meir, a spokeswoman for the Israeli military, said it could not comment on a study it had not seen.
Mr. Arkin argues that too much concern for the legality of individual targets was counterproductive. Waiting for more than a day into the war to bomb Dahiye, Hezbollah’s leadership district in southern Beirut, for instance, no doubt saved civilian lives, but it also guaranteed that Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, had time to escape.
[Yeah, Israel was sure concerned about casualities when they dropped the chemical weapons and bomblets.
And this article was headlined as critical of Israel?
Ooooooh, just their tactics, NOT THEIR ACTIONS, huh?]
Mr. Arkin rejected the conventional critique “that air power somehow served to distort Israel’s military response and limit Israel’s capabilities.”
“Israel did what it was capable of doing because the ground forces weren’t ready to do what people thought they wanted them to do,” he said. “They weren’t trained, equipped or ready.”
[I guess that's why Israel flattened the place, huh?
Couldn't fight man-to-man, huh?
Like the Taliban "terrorists," right?
Fucking STINK-FUCK, COWARDLY ISRAELIS!!!!!
Hezbollah KICKED YOUR ASS and will DO IT AGAIN, shitfuck stinkfucks!!!!!!!!
Israel’s ground forces, including artillery, “caused a tremendous amount of the damage,” he said. Yet Hezbollah kept firing rockets until the end and survived, now rearmed by Iran and Syria. Israeli ground forces fought indifferently, the captured Israelis remain in Hezbollah custody, and Israel’s reputation was damaged, he said.
In debating proportionate use of force and civilian casualties, Mr. Arkin says it is a mistake to rely too heavily on witnesses “as a means of judging war crimes.”
[Yeah, DON'T LISTEN to those VICTIMS, you might get a conscience!
Starting to lose some respect for Arkin a bit here!]
He said Hezbollah fought effectively. “But when human rights organizations and much of the international community showed up or commented, they seemed to act as if the force Israel was battling was nonexistent,” he wrote. “As for the critique of air power, the connotation was that somehow a full-fledged ground war with the same mission against this same tricky and dug-in force would have been both more successful and less destructive.”
[Yeah, it is O.K. to SMASH PEOPLE over the head with air bombs -- particularly when they don't have them.
What is known as an UNFAIR FIGHT -- the only kind of fight the cowards of Israel get involved in.
Otherwise, they would make AmeriKa's boys and girls fight it for them!
Like in the case of Iraq(n)!!!!]
Once a government decides that it is fighting a moral war, “debating the morality of individual strikes is just wrong,” he said. “If you bomb the right target for a specific military purpose, it’s intrinsically legal.”
[Yup, NO WAR CRIMES, no matter how much air ordnance you drop.
But an insurgent or "suicide" bomber, well, that's terrorism!
Not mass-murdering from on high!]
In the end, Mr. Arkin contends, the Israeli military concluded that it could prosecute a fierce and pre-emptive air war despite criticism. “Pre-emption was the theoretical underpinning of the recent attack on Syria, too,” he said, referring to Israel’s attack last month on what it reportedly believed was a nuclear facility supplied by North Korea. “Though given a bad name in Iraq, pre-emption is accepted by the military, and it thrives in the Syria attack and in the ongoing discussions about Iran.”
[You READY for ANOTHER WAR for ISRAEL, Amurka?!
Well, YOU BETTER BE!!!!!]
Mr. Arkin draws two main lessons. The United States and Israel should “practice greater transparency about what you’re doing, about what you’re bombing and why you’re bombing it.”
Second, militaries must properly judge the past. The United States Air Force hated the Kosovo war, which in fact succeeded in its military and political objectives, but loved the Iraq wars, which did not, he said. “We’re looking into a future that involves pre-emption and wars against terrorism” — wars like Israel’s.
[Yeah, murdering over 2 million people on the basis of LIES is always fun, isn't it?
What the hey, it is all in the service of Israel, so we should be happy to sacrifice young American men and women for THEIR wars, right?
EAT UP, Amurka! Eat your WAR DEAD then!]
Mr. Arkin was a military adviser to Human Rights Watch, analyzing the American bombing campaign during the 1999 Kosovo war. He was a military adviser to a United Nations mission to Israel and Lebanon in 2006."
