Comments on: Learning from Foreign Wars

By: M-A Lagrange

M-A Lagrange — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 07:50:14 +0000

What I see in Lebanon 2006 war is the direct effect of preparedness and over self confidence.
Hezbollah spend time and money in preparing all stages of that war. Israel did not.
Hezbollah came with swarming tactic while IDF was still on the Kosovo air strike strategy…
I simply see creativity overwhelming immobility. War is, always has been and always will be mobile in mobilis.

By: Starbuck

Starbuck — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:57:22 +0000

There’s an interesting essay in the book “The Past as Prologue” which describes the danger of case studies to discern lessons learned for future wars. 100 years ago, many military theorists wrote pieces on the Russo-Japanese War, with most analysis being little more than confirmation of a institutional bias than anything else. I see the same with the Lebanon War, with commentators (namely COINtras and COINdinistas) alternately claiming that the IDF’s “defeat” was a result of either too much or too little emphasis on counterinsurgency.

By: Starbuck

Starbuck — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:41:57 +0000

One thing to note is that although Hezbollah did pull off some surprising upsets–such as the C-802 hit on the INS Hanat–well-trained teams of IDF troops with close support aircraft tended to rout Hezbollah main-line troops in close combat. The succesful ambush on the IDF convoy near Zarit seems to have come about–at least in part—due to gross complacency and sloppiness among IDF reservists who were on the last day of their annual mobilization period. (Although Hezbollah did spend months rehearsing and planning the ambush)

I think the claim that counterinsurgency is dulling the American spear is a little alarmist–firefights against the Taliban at Tora Bora, COP Keating and Wanat have been far more fierce than those against Hezbollah.

By: James Montgomery

James Montgomery — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:34:14 +0000

They way I see this… it’s two competing ideas. The first, perception of the people will ultimately determine whether a fighting force was the victor or even if they performed badly/better than average. To explain it to two different audiences… victory/defeat becomes a matter of opinion. I’m not here to tell you that the end of all battles or even wars for that matter are subjective.. but these days… I’m finding endstates are really quite ambiguous.

Secondly… the mention of the Egypian SAM net and subsequent usage of AT teams in the sands of the Sinai echos with a familiar mantra that I fell in on during Command and General Staff school. “Technology must keep pace with tactics or your soldiers will pay the price.” Imagine how that fight would have turned out if the Israelis had just 20 Shrike Anti-Radiation Missiles.

By: Adam Elkus

Adam Elkus — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:24:40 +0000

Well, I think it’s both. It’s just that the manner in which both performed (The IDF badly, Hezbollah better than average) has been distorted. As time goes on, I think that military historians will probably, as Luttwak says, re-evaluate the conflict. There’s a parallel (as Luttwak points) out to 1972 Yom Kippur war, which had a similarly panicked reaction here. People were saying that the tank was dead because of the success of the Egyptian anti-tank units, forgetting the fact that the SAM umbrella that the Egyptians had set up near the Canal played a large role in enabling the success of their ground arm.

By: Crispin Burke

Crispin Burke — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:14:14 +0000

The more I read about this, I can’t tell if Hezbollah performed well or if the IDF simply performed poorly. We tend to demonize the opponents we can’t defeat (similar to the insurgent mythos…insurgents fail about 1/2 the time).