ISRAEL'S LEBANON DEFEAT ALSO LOSS FOR AMERICA

Now the dust has settled in bomb ravaged Lebanon, evidence shows that Israel’s military defeat was bigger than at first thought and it eroded America’s standing in what the Bush administration calls the Muslim street, as well as and in the palaces of America’s few Arab friends.
One of the most starling facts now coming to light is that Hezbollah outmaneuvered Israel military strategists, defeated its counter-intelligence planners and built a sophisticated command and control system. That system allowed Hezbollah’s military leaders to communicate with front line fighters despite the massive Israeli bombing of large parts of the country.
It seems Hezbollah, and not Israel or its Pentagon advisors, learned a lot from studying the Vietnam War, especially the fact that if a guerilla army is well enough dug in to survive heavy bombing, it can later emerge to successfully confront a ground assault. That is how Hezbollah played it. From the outset, Israel arrogantly believed it was facing an inferior opponent and knew where its enemy’s main bunkers and command and control systems were located. All that was needed, Israeli generals thought, was for the Israeli Air force and unmanned drones armed with missiles to destroy all Hezbollah bunkers in a three-day “shock and awe” blitz. That would decapitate the Hezbollah leadership, destroy its weapons dumps and knock out its command systems. As a consequence, Hezbollah front line fighters would have no means of re-supply and would have to emerge from their foxholes to surrender or be shot.
That was a military fantasy born out of Israel’s believe in its own military invincibility. What Israeli generals did not anticipate was that Hezbollah would beat them at their own counter intelligence game. For years, Hezbollah had been cleverly fooling Israeli military planners. It had built bunkers it knew Israeli satellites could see from space and Israeli agents on the ground could photograph but they were decoys. It was a classic military tactic used by the allies during World War 2, especially the British who often used decoy tanks or boats to fool the Luftwaffe. Hezbollah built the decoys at the same time that it secretly constructed the real things - deep, hardened bunkers, many with air-conditioning to hold men, as well as command and control systems, the Hezbollah leadership and a massive arsenal of weapons, including missiles. So while Israeli intelligence was fixated on decoys it lost sight of what was happening under its very nose.
Mossad, the famed Israeli intelligence agency is just beginning to realize that, for years, Hezbollah had also been training highly specialized troops, and front line fighters who could hit and run, using classic guerilla tactics against advancing heavy armor and troops. Like most guerilla armies, a cell structure was employed, whereby each Hezbollah unit assigned to the front line knew what it had to do and the locations of its arms dumps. That meant if a fighter was captured he could only divulge a limited amount of information under tough or brutal interrogation Israeli interrogation.
The effectiveness of Hezbollah’s hit-tech command and control system shocked US and Israeli military analysts because it operated unhindered throughout the 34-day war. It allowed Hezbollah leaders to provide their front lines with information from informers about Israeli troop movements. More importantly, it provided the Hezbollah leadership with a picture of the battlefield that led them to conclude that their Nasr Brigade of several thousand fighters was sufficient to slow down any large Israeli advance. There was, therefore, no need to commit reinforcements from the organization’s 20,000 reserve force which was intended for use in a long war with Israeli.
It has taken until now for Israeli and US military experts to fully comprehend the scale of the Israeli defeat and its implications for both countries. While Hezbollah has maintained a silence on exactly how it defeated the much vaunted Israeli military, figures show that contrary to initial Israeli claims that Hezbollah lost upwards of 500 fighters, the real figure was almost 200. That figure then would be close to the number of Israeli military dead, reflecting just how formidable a foe Hezbollah had proven to be.
For the US military in Iraq, Israel’s defeat had some sobering lessons. First, Israel was too quick to underestimate its enemy because, within days of its bombardment of Lebanon, the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, and his Cabinet, were in a “George Bush-Mission Accomplished” mood. They believed airpower alone would do the job and, when it didn’t, they expected ground troops to destroy the Hezbollah front lines in a matter of days. But, when the Israeli military moved into Lebanon it found exactly what the US military has discovered in Iraq – it is one thing to seize ground and it is a far different thing to hold it. For example, there was no point during the war when the Israeli army showed itself capable of holding ground. Each time it moved into a bombed out village, it lost vehicles and men and retreated. Even when it stayed in a village, it did not succeed in eliminating all the Hezbollah fighters there. They were too well dug in and were a match for their Israeli counterparts. Dispirited at the end of the war, the Israeli Command - in an act of revenge considered a war crime by many foreign observers - littered wide swathes of Lebanon, including hundreds of town, villages and farmland with cluster bomb droplets which have been killing innocent men, women and children ever since.
On the political front, as well as the military front, Israel lost its mantle of invincibility. In the process, the US lost the little influence it had in the region and found its standing among the majority Shiite population in neighboring Iraq severely weakened. Hezbollah’s victory also put America’s friends in the Middle East on notice that the Muslim street respected Hezbollah and disagreed with the leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, who had backed the Israeli-US desire to defeat Hezbollah. Worse still, from a Washington perspective, Israel’s loss was also America’s because Hezbollah’s victory empowered Syria and Iran, as well as Islamist extremists. Ironically, US backing for Israel highlighted once again President Bush’s paradoxical positions on bringing democracy to the Middle East. He supported Israel’s plan to destroy Hezbollah, an organization involved in the democratic process in Lebanon, and also Israel’s desire to wreck Hamas, which was put into power by the Palestinian people in fair elections. The White House also failed to understand why Iraqi Shiites and their leaders, including their Iraqi prime minister, supported Hezbollah and not Israel and America.
The fact is, Shiites have never approved of Israel’s policies in the Middle East and Iraqi Shiites see Hezbollah Shiites as their brothers, just as they do the majority Shiite population in Iran. The lesson that Washington should have learned from the massive Baghdad demonstration in favor of Hezbollah during the 34-day war was that Iraqis have no allegiance to the US. On the contrary, they will willingly oppose Israel and the US if either country attacks Iran. That fact severely weakens the continued US occupation of Iraq and our soldiers in the field.
The failed Israeli military campaign was also a body blow for neo-conservatives and their Israeli allies who believed the defeat of Hezbollah would humiliate its backers, Iran and Syria, and also further the strategy of regime change in the region. Neocons, some of them in the White House, did not even seem to care how many innocents were killed by Israeli air strikes in Lebanon. Neocons were prepared to support a long war by Israeli and applauded Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice when she made the absurd claim that the war Lebanon war represented the “birth pangs of a new Middle East.” Tony Blair’s support for Israel also weakened his standing in Britain.
There are now concerned voices warning that it is only a matter of time before Israel seeks to restore its cloak of invincibility by finding an excuse to invade Lebanon again and finish the job. Alternatively, Israel could mount an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Either course of action would be disastrous but especially an attack on Iran. It would lead to all out war and would collapse the Middle East, leaving nearly 140,000 US soldiers hostage to attacks from Shiites across the region.