"And joining us now to talk a little bit about Israel's military strategy is retired U.S. Army Colonel Pat Lang. He was headed a key Pentagon intelligence service and was the top DIA officer dealing with the Middle East for seven years.
Pat, thanks very much for coming in.
Can this Israeli military strategy of trying to deliver a knockout punch to Hezbollah work?
COL. PAT LANG, U.S. ARMY (RET.): It doesn't make any sense to me. As you know, I've worked in all of these countries and with the IDF a lot, and studied it forever. And this just doesn't make any sense to me what they're doing, because as this Israeli air force major said, it's impossible to go around in a kind of hunt for all of these rocket launchers everywhere.
Hezbollah is a numerous, well organized, disciplined guerrilla army. They have reserves in depth of people among the Shia people of Lebanon.
They've been organizing this ground for five or six years. There are all kinds of tank traps and ambush positions. All kinds of things like this.
It's a murderous place to go fight. And the idea that you can root people like that out who are Islamic zealots and cause them to quit and run away with air power and artillery and some small- scale operations, it's just -- it's just not on.
BLITZER: So what do you see the Israeli military strategy -- I mean, I assume they appreciate the same factors that you appreciate.
LANG: I don't understand it. I can't understand it. The only way you can stop Hezbollah from shooting into north Lebanon is to move...
BLITZER: Into north Israel.
LANG: Into north Israel is to move their gun line back to the north far enough so that, in fact, they can't reach you.
The only way to do that, in my opinion, is with ground troops. Now, I know the IDF does not want to occupy part of Lebanon again, but they've somehow gotten themselves in a position in which there may be no other choice. And from what I understand, they're mobilizing large numbers of people and they're probably thinking it over.
The other part of their strategy...
BLITZER: Because they tried that invasion for, what, 18 years, and it turned out to not such a great experience.
LANG: It was a terrible experience. The Lebanese lined up to fight them all over the place. It was a continual dribble of casualties all the time which finally politically caused Israel to withdraw from southern Lebanon.
And the other part of this, which is to -- to cause the Lebanese government to be something that it is not, a unified government that has an army that's a real army, instead of symbol of national unity who will act against Hezbollah, that's just not on. The Lebanese don't have that in them to do it.
BLITZER: The brigadier general, Alon Friedman, of the IDF, the Israeli defense forces, was quoted yesterday as saying, "Israeli strikes have destroyed about 50 percent of Hezbollah's arsenal. It will take us time to destroy what is left."
Does that sound credible, that half of the rockets, half of the arsenal over the past nine days has been destroyed?
LANG: Well, there's no way for me to know and there's no way for them to know either, in any way. I mean, you know, I've fought this kind of war against guerillas in various places before, and you never really know until you get to talk to the people who were defeated afterwards to find out how many people you actually bagged.
The only way you know how much you have worn them down by attrition is when the fire that comes into northern Israel starts to fall off and you run into less resistance when you go in on the ground.
BLITZER: I don't think he meant that they killed half of Hezbollah. I think what he said -- he meant they destroyed half of their rockets, let's say.
LANG: I don't think there's any way to know that. As I said, the only way you can know if those deep bunkers of rockets all over southern Lebanon have been emptied is if the fire into northern Israel starts to diminish. That's the only way you'll know.
BLITZER: All right. So put on your advice cap. You used to give advice to defense secretaries and top U.S. officials.
If you were advising the Israeli government right now, the Israeli military, they've got rockets coming in from south Lebanon, they've got Hezbollah crossing the border, killing and kidnapping Israeli soldiers, this is a U.N. recognized border, what would you do if you were the Israeli military?
COL. PAT LANG, FORMER PENTAGON MIDEAST INTEL. CHIEF: I would have advised them to take specific punitive action on the people who hurt them with the death of these soldiers and to negotiate an outcome with that.
BLITZER: What does that mean exactly, spell it out?
LANG: Well they've done this before. They've worked with the Germans and other people for the return of captured soldiers, things of that kind.
BLITZER: To do a prisoner swap?
LANG: That kind of thing.
BLITZER: But doesn't that encourage further terrorism down the road?
LANG: Well in this, as in many situations in war and politics, in fact you often have to choose between two bad alternatives. Now having done what they have done now, they are now in a position in which in four, five, six days, a week, two weeks, whatever it is, they're going to decide that they have no choice but to put a large force into southern Lebanon. And that's going to hurt them badly for a long time. In a lot of these things, once you start down the road, having made a bad decision, you're just stuck.
BLITZER: Pat Lang, U.S. Army colonel, retired. Thanks very much for coming in.
LANG: Good to see you, Wolf.
BLITZER: Thank you Pat.
This business below was a comment on one of my things about Iraq. The poster is a frequent visitor here who insists that he is not an American. I found it so interesting that I decided to make it a full fledged "post."
The first group are people for whom war is a trade, a way of life suited to their nature, a nature that is restless in civil society. For them there is a certain disinterest in the concerns of civilians, a preference for a kind of "monasticism" unlimited by the strictures of Benedict's Rule or any other "Rule" unconnected with their often unexpressed and often inexpressible code of behavior. I imagine this Venetian soldier to be one such. Such people are not a problem for civilians because they do not seek a close interaction with civilians and prefer to live among their own kind waiting for the bugle's call. Even in retirement they tend to keep to themselves and live apart. In combat units people like this are the natural leaders and "reference points for emulation" no matter what their rank. If you are not a veteran or not from a military background, then you may not know anyone of this breed.
They do not seek you out.
Then there are "Warriors" as described below. This is not a vocational group. This is an aspiration involving a search for a satisfactory self image and acceptance as a "tough guy."
The group described as "warriors" above don't need that kind of assurance. They just "work there." This old Sioux needs no assurance. He has no need to prove how tough he is.
In any even this is an interesting comment.
Pat Lang
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"The redstates bit is indeed the key. That is what I tried to point to, not sure if I succeeded.
The problem is this peculiar gung-ho mindset that knows only us and them-who-are-against-us. Walter Russel Mead iirc dubbed them the Jacksonians.
I last read it to be referred to as the 'warrior' mindset. I think the folks described are these angry white men who watch FOX and who the GOP sees as an important part of their base.
The definition of this so-called 'warrior' reads as follows:
"(The Warrior) by nature is unsuited for modern wars. He doesn’t understand them, can’t adapt to them.
The Warrior is emotionally suited to pitched, Pattonesque battles of moral clarity and simple intent. I don’t mean that he is stupid.... Yet emotionally the Warrior has the uncomplicated instincts of a pit bull. Intensely loyal to friends and intensely hostile to the enemy, he doesn’t want any confusion as to which is which. His tolerance for ambiguity is very low. He wants to close with the enemy and destroy him.... This works in wars like WWII.... It does not work when winning requires the support of the population. The Warrior, unable to see things through the eyes of the enemy, or of the local population, whom he quickly comes to hate, wants to blow hell out of things. He detests all that therapeutic crap, that touchy-feely leftist stuff about respect the population, especially the women. Having the empathy of an engine block, he regards mention of mutilated children as intensely annoying at best, and communist propaganda at worst.
On the net these men sometimes speak approvingly to each other of the massacre at My Lai. Hey, they were all Cong. If they weren’t, they knew who the Cong were and didn’t tell us. Calley did the right thing, taught them a lesson. There is an admiration of Calley for having avoided bureaucratic rules of engagement probably dreamed up by civilians. War is war. You kill people. Deal with it.
If you point out that collateral damage (dead children, for example) makes the survivors into murderously angry Viet Cong, the Warrior thinks that you are a lefty tree-hugger.
Today, the battlefield as understood by the enemy, but seldom by the Warrior, extends far beyond the physical battlefield, and the chief targets are political. In this kind of war, if America can get the local population to support it, the insurgents are out of business; if the insurgents can get the American public to stop supporting the war, the American military is out of business. This is what counts. It is what works. The Warrior, all oooh-rah and jump wings, doesn’t get it. Vo Nguyen Giap got it. Ho Chi Minh got it.
Thus the furious, embittered insistence of Warriors that “We won Tet of ’68. We slaughtered them! We won, dammit! Militarily, we absolutely won!” Swell, but politically they lost. It was a catastrophe on the order of Kursk or Dien Bien Phu. But they can’t figure it out.
The warrior doesn’t understand what “victory” means because he thinks in terms of firefights, courage, weaponry, and valor. His approach is emotional, not rational....
However, the Warrior does not grant the public the right to grow weary. For him, America exists to support the military, not the other way around. Are two hundred dead a week coming back from Asia? The Warrior believes that small-town America (which is where the coffins usually go) should grit its teeth, bear down, and make the sacrifice for the country. Sacrifice for what? It doesn’t matter. We’re at war, dammit. Rally ‘round. What are you, a commy?
To the Warrior, to doubt the war is treason, aiding and supporting, liberalism, cowardice, back-stabbing, and so on. He uses these phrases unrelentingly. We must fight, and fight, and fight, and never yield, and sacrifice and spend. We must never ask why, or whether, or what for, or do we want to. "
I guess the author got it right in his peculiar way."
http://www.fredoneverything.net/TheWarrior.shtml