Posted on 03/08/2016 5:12:20 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
For about three and half years, since the summer of 2012, Hezbollah has been actively involved in the Syrian civil war. From protecting its weapons caches on Syrian soil and guarding assets essential to the regime of President Bashar Assad, the Lebanese organization moved on to frontline positions. In many cases, it is Shi’ite fighters who led Assad’s attacks on rebel organizations, and paid a price accordingly. At the beginning of this year it was estimated in the Israel Defense Forces that at least 1,300 Hezbollah fighters had been killed in the war in Syria and about 5,000 wounded. At any given moment Hezbollah has about 5,000 of its fighters in Syria, nearly a quarter of its standing force.
Intelligence officials in Israel pondered for quite some time how to assess the war’s effect on Hezbollah. The long fighting and heavy losses have created a problem of erosion in the organization, which has been subjected to severe criticism at home about sending Shi’ite young men to their deaths in Syria only to save the tyrant from Damascus. Hezbollah does not publish the official count of its dead and has buried some of them in nighttime funerals with the aim of avoiding media coverage.
The organization’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has had to explain time and again that the fighting in Syria is essential in order to save the Muslim world from Al-Qaida, Islamic State and their ilk. Hezbollah found it difficult to continue to depict itself as defending Lebanon when Sunni suicide terrorists blew themselves up in the heart of Beirut in response to the organization’s involvement in the Syrian war. The flames in Syria, said former IDF chief of staff Benny Gantz in a speech in June 2013, are already licking the hem of Nasrallah’s robe. read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.706956
(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...
Israel must be laughing.
One sect of muslims (who would kill Jews for fun at a moments notice) killing another sect of muslims (who would kill Jews for fun at a moments notice) in heavy and no- prisoners -taken fighting.
There strategy should be to stay out of it!
Or to prop up which ever side starts to lose.
The problem is wars create highly trained armies.
I wonder if that was part of Reagan’s thinking when he didn’t respond to Hezbollah bombing our Marine barracks in Lebanon?
Indeed. Separates the wheat from the chaff.
Cap Weinberger convinced Reagan not to retaliate appropriately. Then the US chickened out entirely. This emboldened Iran (which was behind the bombing).
[and 85-90% of the world's Muslims are Sunni, IOW, Shiites kill twice as many per capita]
Wars also deplete armies.
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