Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 07/25/06 3:55 pm:
learned a lot from their brothers in Iraq.
not quite ;and yes they have demonstrated some sophisticated tactics as well as command and control.. They have not demonstrated any of the insurgency tactics at all .The have dug in to the terrain motre simular to the Japanese at Okinawa . it remains to be seen if they fall back into an insugency of attrition . Anyway ;they are trained by Iran Revolutionary Guard .
Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 07/25/06 4:53 pm:
Those Japanese were very hard to root out. We paid a very high price...
yes we did ,and that was why I mentioned the issue of their true commitment to martyrdom. Also our air superiority was challenged at Okinawa to a degree and our ordinance was not quite as capable as todays bunker busters or as Elliot pointed out the hyperbaric bombs that we proved were very effective during Tora Bora .
Clarification/Follow-up by ETWolverine on 07/25/06 6:10 pm:
Dim,
Yes, the Israelis are running into more sophisticated tactics than they had expected, but nothing they can't handle.
I find it interesting that Hizbollah are using tactics that are most often used by standing armies rather than terrorist groups. (With the exception of the fact that they are doing so while hiding among civilians, of course.) That is an interesting development, and one that actually plays to Israel's strengths. Israel's military is trained and experienced and equiped for this kind of warfare. The Hez really aren't, for all that they learned a few tricks in Iraq. Hizbollah are really terrorists at heart, and their most effective tactics are attacking civillians and hiding among civillians. Stand-up battles are not really their strong point. Israel is set up for that sort of urban and/or trench warfare. So I have to wonder if whoever is calling the shots for Hizbollah is as much of a military idiot as he seems to be. So far it looks that way.
Israel is methodical in its tactics. They will move house by house, apartment by apartment, block by block and trench by trench to clear out an entire area. That is what they are doing now. That sort of urban warfare is the dirtiest, messiest, nastiest kind of warfare that a soldier can fight. Hizbollah can't really handle that sort of battle for very long, whereas Israel has proven that they can fight that sort of battle for years at a time if they have to, without stopping, just as they have been doing in the West Bank and Gaza for the past couple of decades. Yes, progress is slow, but it is still progress. And if Israel's military leaders say that they can clear the proposed buffer zone in a matter of weeks, you can assume they know exactly what they are talking about.
Oh, and Rummy was right... the US military took out the Iraqi military in about a month. His prediction on that score was correct. But he clearly underestimated what would happen after major warfare was over. He underestimated the amount of insurgency that there would be. Still it isn't anything that our troops can't handle if they are allowed to do so.
Plus, I wonder if some of the "insurgents" in Iraq who are feeling the heat might not pull out of Iraq and set their sights on a "new" battlefield... the one in Lebanon. That would split their strength further, and pit the "insurgents" against the two most capable military forces in the entire world. Or they might stay put and get their buts handed to them by our troops in Iraq a little at a time. Either way, it works out fine by me.
Elliot
Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 07/26/06 9:57 am:
I heard a report yesterday about 1500 Mahdi Army volunteers are headed to Lebanon.
The Hezbollah fighter were trained by Iranian Revolutionary Guard trainers .The insurgeny in Iraq are Baath and Fedaheen holdovers and remnants . They were trained by Spetsnaz or whatever Russia calls their elites nowadays . That is why they have been so troublesome.
