[AHN] Lebanese Army To Engage Israel If Lebanon Is Invaded]

Wow it's a wild Fri. night/early Sat. morning in here....

From what I understand and I could be wrong (because it's early in the morning and this is all off the top of my head), Hezbollah was the only group out of the many that fought in the 2nd Lebanese Civil War of 1975-1990 that was allowed to keep its weapons as part of the Taif Accords signed in Saudi Arabia, which signified the official end of that conflict. So it's not a matter of the Lebanese army being unable to disarm Hezbollah, but legally they can't iirc.

 

Has the IDF invaded yet?

 

Actually there are plenty of examples of using sheer force to defeat groups like Hezbollah, from Carthage to Malaysia to Bosnia. Iraq is really not a good comparison. There you have multiple opposing groups all fighting as insurgents rather than one group like in Lebanon. The other groups in Lebanon don't like an armed Hezbollah either. Not a good comparison at all.

Not criticising. More interested in the idea of them taking on Israel instead of Hezbollah. These aren't independent problems with one more important that the other - they are inextricably linked. Israel is bombing Lebanon because Hezbollah attacked Israel. As Lebanon, when faced with the prospect of squaring off with Israel or Hezbollah, I'd take Hezbollah.

 

Yep......

 

Doubt it. All just lip-service, Lebanese style.

 

Wasn't Lebanon supposed to put it's troops on the Israeli border? Did they even try?

So, is it Israel's fault that Lebanon did nothing to reduce the threat to Israel from terrorists who controlled Lebanon's southern border?

I will not defend Israel's attacks on the Lebanese infrastructure elsewhere in the country, but I see where they have a right to attack hezbollah including invading.

 

I wouldn't put too far past the crazy conspiracy theory to think the Lebanese army may use Israels presence as a pretext to move into to Hezbolla territory and perhaps displace them. Israel and Lebedon wouldn't really be allies but they wouldn't really be enemies.

Lebanon says " we are moving the Lebanese army to the border to defend our nation, Israel skermishes with Hezbollah but never enters Lebanon in force. If Hezbollah clashes with the Lebanese troops they just tell Israel where they are. They keep deniability because they are defending the country but they are infact displacing Hezbollah, over running and confiscating their weapons...in the name of Lebanon.

Good Plan huh.

 

They can't do either but they're looking from the standpoint that their country is being invaded by a foreign power while even though many in Lebanon don't support Hezbollah they will still fight on their side if it means defending their homes.

It would be akin to if Iran invaded the US saying they were getting the Bush Admin. Democrats would still fight to repel the Iranians.

 

As I mentioned in another thread I don't know where you got the idea that sheer force defeated the Malaysian insurgency. Also none of the Bosnian insurgents, Serb, Muslim or Croat were wiped out through sheer force. They agreed to a cease fire that was motivated by force but they weren't defeated and even now still hold onto most of the territory they ethnically cleansed. the only example of the three of total victory is Carthage and that was a long time ago with far different tactics. Also Hanibal wasn't an insurgent since he wasn't fighting on his own soil. He was an invader. If you want to use a Roman example of sheer force crushing an insurgency a better example would be the defeat of the Judean Rebels.

 

Iran has trained and armed hezbollah reall well. hezbollah posses high tech missels, tanks and guns. however, unless ira directly gets involved, isreal will still demolish hezbollah with an ground offensive. isreals army is frightningly strong.

 

They couldn't do it the last time around when they occupied Lebanon for a long period of time, what has changed this time around?

 

Maybe it's because this guy got a raw deal:

 

So . .do armies fight internal issues
I don't think the army took down David Koresh
I think it was another group

I maybe wrong. . but if a terrorist cell
or even a couple of thousand were in america
It would not be the ARMY that took them down
ATF, FBI, CIA, Local State and few Cops

but not the ARMY

Rocket River
. . why can we expect Lebanon's ARMY to fight Hezebellah
when our ARMY would not do the same?

 

Well, it is fairly well recorded that force is the starting component of a successful campaign.


It's worth noting that the counterinsurgency most often cited as a model of success, the British-led fight against the communist insurgency in colonial Malaya after World War II, began with great difficulty. In the first three years of what became a 12-year war, serious errors were made, high-ranking leaders had to be replaced, and the communist movement grew in military and political power. Then the British started getting it right, and nine years and several elections later they were able to grant independence to the new, mostly peaceful and politically stable country of Malaysia. An excellent study of the Malaya and Vietnam conflicts and the U.S. military's institutional capacity to usefully assess its own experiences is John Nagl's Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/insurgency/can/

Differences in organizational culture is the primary reason why the British Army learned to conduct counterinsurgency in Malaya while the American Army failed to learn in Vietnam. The American Army resisted any true attempt to learn how to fight an insurgency during the course of the Vietnam Conflict, preferring to treat the war as a conventional conflict in the tradition of the Korean War or World War II. The British Army, because of its traditional role as a colonial police force and the organizational characteristics that its history and the national culture created, was better able to quickly learn and apply the lessons of counterinsurgency during the course of the Malayan Emergency. This is the first study to apply organizational learning theory to cases in which armies were engaged in actual combat.

John Nagel, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam to Malaysia: Learning to Eat Soup with A Knife, 2002

Also see Thomas Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, 1919-1960 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990)

Like other conflicts, the Malayan Emergency offers lessons that have applicability to future wars. It is one of the few examples of a low intensity conflict that was won by the government in power and thus is a favorite subject of case studies on insurgency. In addition, it stands as one of the best illustrations of a coordinated political-military effort that actually defeated a guerrilla force. Such coordination remains essential to the resolution of any conflict on any level of intensity, but it is particularly critical for low intensity conflicts and the growing field of peace operations. Finally, it reveals how military power—or airpower—can support low intensity operations.

http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/jfq_pubs/1622.pdf

The objective was achieved by force. That's the point. It isn't necessarily required to 'wipe them out.'

As far as your assertions on El Salvador:

A strategicvictory does not validate all the victor’s operationaland tactical methods or make them universally ap-plicable, as America’s defeat in Vietnam and its suc-cess in El Salvador demonstrate.

Dr. Kalev Sepp, "Best Practices in Counterinsurgency," Military Review, May-June 2005

During the 12-year-long Salvadoran Civil War, 25 SFfield advisers and 30 staff advisers were the coreof the effort that trained the 50,000-man SalvadoranArmy that battled insurgents to a draw and forcedthem to accept a negotiated end to the war.

Dr. Kalev Sepp, "Best Practices in Counterinsurgency," Military Review, May-June 2005

Other examples of successful counterinsurgencies can be seen in Greece, the Philippines, and the (American) Indian Wars.

 

That's exactly how i see it. It's very unforunate that they never did just that with their army. It could have kept this whole mess from unraveling.

 

I didn't know Lebanon had an army. Is the term Lebanese army and oxymoron? The Lebanese army chances of fighting the Israeli army head on are about as good as the Polish army fighting the Germans during WWII.

 

This time it will be allout war. the isrealies are fighting for there survival. make no mistake, iran and hezbollah are trying to dismantel and abolish isreal once and for all. the last time the isrealies fought the hezbollah, it was just hezbollah trying to regain there terrotories. this time they are trying to attack the isrealie borders itself. isreal will unleash it's full arsenal of weapons. convential or no-convential if they have to. you do not wanna stir a sleeping giant. if the isrealies start a allout attack, they'll destroy any country in the region probaly except iran who has a very strong army and missell program.

 

Yeah, those little rocket attacks are shaking Israel to the core.

 

I can understand that people might want to conclude that Israel is in the wrong in this case, but I think this response has to be considered either ill thought out or disingenous. If rockets were exploding in our cities indiscriminately, or if you could envision that, your response might be different.