A Christian Soldier War-Games the Jewish State

Lutheran pastor and blogger Mark Daniels (Better Living) calls himself an "armchair historian," but he ain't a bad armchair general, either. His sadder-but-wiser postmortem of Israel's ominously inconclusive battle against Hezbollah is very astute. Daniels draws on the thinking of "[t]he wisest stewards of massive military advantage," from Dwight Eisenhower to Colin Powell:

The first thing they've known is that the implied use of force often accomplishes more than its actual use. "Power is what people think you have," my Ohio State PoliSci prof, Jim Kweder, used to tell us. [ ... ] Had the Israeli government exercised some patience, it might have been able to exert prevailing, massive pressure on Hezbollah through Arab countries already condemning the group's actions and so, driven a wedge of disunity within the ranks of Israel's historic enemies.

Had that failed, there was always the Powell Doctrine:

The second thing which the wise stewards of military power know is that once a decision has been made to fight, nothing necessary for victory must be held back: :

[T]he [Powell] Doctrine expresses that military action should be used only as a last resort and only if there is a clear risk to national security by the intended target; the force, when used, should be overwhelming and disproportionate to the force used by the enemy; there must be strong support for the campaign by the general public; and there must be a clear exit strategy from the conflict in which the military is engaged.

[ ... ] When Hezbollah attacked, Israel had every right and responsibility as a sovereign state, to protect its citizens. But the Olmert government also then had a choice about how to defend Israel. It could have employed the implied use of force, striving to isolate Hezbollah on the one hand, or gone after the terrorist group with overwhelming force, on the other. Either option could have been legitimately supported and pursued. But the government there chose neither one. Now, after enormous loss of life in both Israel and Lebanon and after giving Hezbollah a PR-windfall, the Israeli government has severely crippled Lebanon's nascent democracy and filled Lebanese of all stripes with renewed hatred for Israel.

Mark agrees with Donald Sensing and with my friend Barry Casselman, of the Washington Times and RealClearPolitics, that this will lead to the replacement of Ehud Olmert by Benjamin Netanyahu -- a blow, in Mark's view, to the prospects for a two-state solution that offers the best hope for Israel's survival.

Comments

[Pesky Settler]

The Gaza Palestinians have had it easy so far with Olmert as Prime Minister. In the past year, they've spent way too much time firing Kassams into Israel and not enough time trying to build themselves out of a refugee camp mentality and do something constructive with the land they DO have.

Maybe by having Netanyahu back in office he'll be able to give them the proper incentive to start creating their own state and stop trying to destroy ours.

[Mark Daniels]

amba:
Thanks so much for linking to my post.

Mark

[julie]

The problem is that the Powell doctrine is confused with the new right "exterminate the brutes" doctrine by people like you.

Overwhelming force means an army capable of defeating the oher army, it usually means less dead because the other force has room to act and situations can be controlled. Thus we controlled Somalia when we had 30,000 troops.

Your belief is bombers and lots and lots of dead people especially women and children. You think this proves one is tough.

In a situation such as it faced the IDF was incpable. You can't take fortified, competent defences with a rag tagg army that hasn't trained in large formations in years which won't put infantry out to defend tanks and hold territory and is afraid of casualties.

Thus the reliance on air war and massive destruction of infrastructure (which you confuse with Powell doctrine except you feel hundreds of thousands should be dead to show toughness) and other magical beliefs.

[Walrus]

Julie, what you are protesting against is actually the Rumsfeld Doctrine. I think when you taok about Amba and Mark's "magical beliefs" and confusion about the Powell Doctrine, you are in fact imputing to them thoughts and beliefs and confusions they do not actually hold, which you would not do if you knew either of them better, or had read their posts with greater attention.

It is strange how the phrase "people like you" is invariably used about people we know very little or not at all...

[amba]

Quite wrong, Julie (by the way you're the same as Anna, I see). "Overwhelming force" would have been a ground force. Air attacks were a mistake. Rumsfeld doctrine, a proven failure. They're too imprecise (depending as they do on imprecise intelligence), too indiscriminately destructive, and they do give the impression that an army is afraid to take casualties.