Stratfor: Red Alert: The Battle Joined

Stratfor intelligence ^ | 07/21/2006 | analysis@stratfor.com

[SierraWasp]

Ain't it the delightful truth? (snort!)

[Mr. Jazzy]

If this is the situation, then Israel needs to be on offensive.

Hell-a-baluu is sponsored, armed and directed not by Syria but by Iran.

The next step is for Israel to tell Iran that the next target is ...

Tehran.

[bert]

I question the efficacy of bunker busters. They apparently were used in Beruit on the complex there and we don't know what they did. We do know no big baddies were done in.

Also in Iraq we watched them fall but never saw really damaged bunkers. To the contrary, we saw bunkers entered and cautiously explored.

[goldstategop]

Israel faces a complex and challenging task. Defeating the PLO on the ground was a piece of cake back in the 80s. Hezbollah put a lot of thought and effort into making sure Israel can't do that again. Now Israel will have to counter with some surprises of her own in this war.

(Go Israel, Go! Slap 'Em, Down Hezbullies.)

[Richard Kimball]

"Fixed fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of man." -- George S. Patton

[itsahoot]

All these articles about 200 foot deep bunkers are funny. Did not do the talaban much good did it?

In case you didn't notice Sadam Hussien's bunkers survived our best bunker busters. German engineering is pretty good.

[gura]

Hell, come out of the Golan, put the Litani on your left flank and drive for Beirut.

[gotribe]

Hiz will just jump over into syria.

[Mike Darancette]

Hiz will just jump over into syria.

Not if you cut them off before they can get around the Golan.

[Mike Darancette]

Drive fro Golan keep the river on your right flank and drive north of Tyre while coming up from the south. Trap them in the South and avoid having Lebanese troops linking up.

[Wolfstar]

Israel should just annex the southern half of Lebanon and be done with it.

Israel should have annexed the southern part of Lebanon, Gaza Strip and West Bank long ago, tossed out the Arabs and set up a secure border.

[ThanhPhero]

Bunkers were the Japanese tactic in the Pacific on Iwo and Oki and other places. They were expensive to clean up but they did not survive. We did not have the bunker busting weapons and precision capabilities that we (and Israel) have now.

[Straight Vermonter]

There is no way that Israel is going to Bekaa. I would be surprised if they went farther north than Sidon.

[ThanhPhero]

Israel should just annex the southern half of Lebanon and be done with it.

1967. It would not have been diffiult then, not like that same operation now. They should have pushed the saracens into Jordan and Egypt and flooded the West Bank, Gaza, and Southern Lebanon with settlers. That's "flooded," not merely "allowed to settle." Non Moslem Lebanese could have been allowed to stay; others pushed north.

[ModelBreaker]

I don't see how fighting from fortified positions against an enemy with air superiority is a good strategy. No mobility and Israel knows or will discover where they are.

[gotribe]

That's one option for sure - instead of entering the bekaa valley, just cut it off and starve it. If the good guys can take the heights, they can pummel the valley forever without much risk. And the IAF can keep the syrians at bay. But the israelis will still have to cut off the rat paths and rather quickly.

[ModelBreaker]

That's "flooded," not merely "allowed to settle." Non Moslem Lebanese could have been allowed to stay; others pushed north.

All that does is move the missle targets north. Israel needs an occupied, uninhabited buffer zone. And that will have to get wider over time as Muslims get their hands on longer and longer range missles.

[Blind Eye Jones]

What if Iran is crazy enough to use their missiles on Israel with an attack on the Americans in Iraq? Crazy, yes, but then they are crazy to begin with!

[1911a1freep]

I definitely agree. Invading Lebanon and taking heavy casualties against dug in Hezbollah forces is playing right into what Iran wants. Stay on the defense in Lebanon and continue air strikes with bunker busters and use the full force of the IDF to surround and destroy the Bekaa valley and everyone in it. The US should support this with everything we have in the arsenal. Its time to stop worrying about the what the Arab street thinks. We are fast approaching the point described in VDH's column "Patience is wearing thin". Its time to give them an example of total annihilation.

[ken5050]

What the IDF should do, IMHO, is move rapidly to the Litani river, seal it off, then turn southward and start to clean out the Hexbollah, one village at a time.