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Worth a read.

There are many ways to win a war with Hezbollah. The key is to prevent them from fading into the civilian population only to attack as soon as Israels back is turned. The Israeli mission is to find and destroy their missiles with out being attacked by small arms fire.

Hezbollah does not have tanks, artillery, or even anti- aircraft weapons. Israeli planes fly overhead unopposed. They have complete air superiority. Israelis can fly drones with out a shot being fired at them. They can take in Helicopters and not fear being shot down.

Hezbollah has no howitzers or much of anythings except small arms, lots of short range missiles and a few long range missiles.

Hezbollah is never going to try to attack and hold ground in Israel. That would be suicide. Their mission is to set up missile launchers, launch and run. They are a guerrilla force. Equipped with small arms. Their mission is to launch missiles on Israel.

There are two sections of Hezbollah. There is the one that is engaged in earning support of Lebanese citizens. They build schools, hospitals, and houses. That gives them good local support.

The other section's mission is to launch rockets and missiles into Israel. This section consists of about 2000 troops. They are trained to shoot missiles. That is not a very hard task. It is not a high skill job. If Israel killed all 2000 of them they could recruit and train 2000 more in a few weeks.

The Israeli mission is to destroy all the long range missiles. Since the short range missiles can only travel 12 miles, Israel plans to take the bottom 12 miles of Lebanon and hold it. It is next to impossible to get all the little short range missiles there are about 10,000 of them. But Israel must destroy the long range missiles and make it impossible for Syria to resupply the long range missiles.

That is what it will take to make Israel safe. This is not the battle of the bulge. Surround and kill has little value in this case. The Blogger doesn't really understand the situation. The object has never been to kill people, it has been to destroy the long range missiles, and take and hold the ground that will prevent the short range missiles from reaching Israel.

thanks for that link to Varifrank. This summed it up nicely:

"Why would any government be interested in sending a message of their own weakness at the beginning of a shooting war"? Well, you do it because you want the enemy to commit. You want the enemy to be in the best place for you to deal with them, not in a place where they can defend or they can retreat from.

And the only tactics they have -- keep shooting the same missiles and bringing down retaliatory raids (the IAF has always been superb; a few years ago I read that the IAF is actually capable of running more sorties per day than the US military), try to sell the world on the false premise that the terrorists are civilian victims, and keep rushing to meet the IDF in largely hopeless firefights.

This whole operation actually benefits Syria to some extent, which is the reason there has been no response until now, nor will there be. Syria won't talk to anyone who has any chance of bringing ab out a diplomatic solution to avoid post-annihilation (of Hizbullah) recriminations. Syria might go ahead if Assad et al thought there was any chance of success, but Syria sure doesn't want Hizbollah to be more of a partner to Iran, and sure doesn't want the surviving Hizzies to flee into Syria.

If Egypt makes a move on the southern border, we'll see Syria enter the war as well. But the Egyptian gov't doesn't care to risk a massive defeat (and the negation of the treaty with Israel) because the Islamofascists (funded by Saudi Arabia and perhaps other factions funded by Iran) will start an uprising and civil war. The Egyptians don't look good when the terrorists blow up Egyptian hotels in Sinai.