Dan Halutz is the first IDF chief of staff who is not a soldier. He is a military aviator. I had missed that, but a statement attributed to a "senior officer" of the IDF in a New York Times story today caused me to look at IDF leadership. The "scales" have fallen from my eyes. "I believe in AIR POWER," the officer told the Times and Halutz is likely to be the officer who was interviewed
He has no ground forces experience at all. He reminds me a bit of Rumsfeld, the one time naval aviator and opponent of the use of sizable ground forces. Like Rumsfeld he is a proponent of "modern" warfare, gee-whiz techno- equipment and disdainful of big, heavy armored forces. He has re-organized the armed forces so that the ground forces no longer report directly to him.
Someone will say that Chaim Laskov had been head of the Israel Air Force (IAF) before becoming chief of staff in the early '50s. This is essentially irrelevant as a comparative situation. Laskov was not a pilot and was a ground force commander and a founder of the IDF Armored Corps before he became head of the air force.
Halutz is an ally of right wing political forces in Israel and an extreme proponent of the "Air Power" ideology that has been an active force in military affairs ever since it was enunciated by the Italian fascist Giulio Douhet in the '20s. The doctrine was taken up by Hugh Trenchard in Britain, Mitchell in the U.S., and the pre-war 2 German Luftwaffe. It persists in many air forces today.
The "Air Power" ideology in its purest form holds that ground forces have largely been made obsolete and useless by the invention and development of aircraft and other air delivered weapons, missiles, etc.
"Air Power" theorists believe that this is true at the tactical, operational and strategic levels.
In Lebanon the IDF appears to be following a strategy at all levels that is entirely dictated by "Air Power" theory.
At the tactical and operational levels of war, Israel seems to be intent on destroying Hizballah south of the Litani River and north of Metulla to some unknown depth. Thus far, just about all the attacks against Hizballah have been made by air weapons and artillery. These weapons are inherently indiscriminate in their application, especially in the hands of "Air Power" theorists who typically want to "make the rubble bounce." This is especially true if the aforesaid airplane enthusiasts see that their theories are not yielding the desired result. If you still believe in "surgical strikes," look at the pictures from Lebanon. The IAF is "leafleting" all of south Lebanon urging citizens to leave their homes and flee northward. They appear to be intent on "herding the cats" away from their border through the use of aerial firepower. They know that Hizballah is a LEBANESE Shia guerrilla army with its roots in the Shia portion of the Lebanese population. Most of the people of the south are Shia, and the IDF knows that if they remain where they are they will support the Hizballah guerrillas both now and in the future. Indeed, the guerrillas, are, in many cases, villagers from this area. In any event, the present IDF effort to "cleanse" the south of guerrillas by fire will fail. The IAF and its associated heavy artillery simply lacks the weight of fire needed to drive this enemy from its prepared positions in the stony ground of South Lebanon. The actual ground maneuver attempted thus far is a joke and typical of the role imagined by "Air Power" advocates for ground forces. "Maroun al-Ras" is a tiny village less than a mile from the Israeli border, and no amount of fancy graphics on TV "gushed" over by retired generals can alter the fact that its capture is an insignificant achievement that has had and will have no effect on the amount of fire going into northern Israel.
At the strategic level, the IDF under Halutz is following classic "Air Power" theory which holds that crushing the "Will of the People" is the correct objective in compelling the acceptance of one's own "will" by an adversary or neutral. With that objective in mind, all of the target country is considered to be one, giant target set. Industry, ports, bridges, hospitals, roads, you name it. It is all "fair game." In this case the notion is to force the Lebanese government and army to accept a role as the northern jaw in a vise that will crush Hizballah and subsequently to hold south Lebanon against Hizballah. Since Lebanon is a melange of ethnic and religious communities of which Shia LEBANESE are a major element and since many Lebanese Shia are supporters of Hizballah, the prospect of getting the Lebanese government to do this is "nil." As for the Lebanese Army, the US attempted for two years (1982-84) to re-structure and re-train the Lebanese Army to make it a "national" non-sectarian force only to learn when this army was committed to battle in 1984 against Druze and Christian forces, that it simply fell apart. The US then abandoned the effort. Nothing much has changed in Lebanon since then.
Bottom Lines:
-Air Power and artillery will not decisively defeat Hizballah or force it to withdraw from rocket range of Israel.
-The Lebanese government and army are not what the Israelis have once again dreamt of and they should have known that. The policy that Israel is following is truly a triumph of hope over experience.
-An international force that will fight Hizballah in the south to disarm it is a pipe dream. Who will do that? The only realistic candidate would be France in terms of military capacity. This would be a major irony of history.
Bottom Line Advice for Israel: Occupy the ground or expect to suffer the effects of failure.
Pat Lang
pl,
You are right. Nonetheless, that looks like their plan or hope. The IDF experience in southern Lebanon 1982-2000 hangs over the enterprise like a black cloud. Certainly, resuscitating UNIFIL as peacekeepers in southern Lebanon or introducing any other international force lacks credibility for those who are realists. Of course that does not stop the wind machine from fronting the idea or even giving the “liberated” zone to the Lebanese Army. But then, the talk keeps the conflict in play. Time will tell. Sure got out of control rather fast, almost automatically.
Posted by: john | 24 July 2006 at 03:44 PM
The whole idea of a buffer zone occupied by international troups or Israelis is pure stupidity if it's supposed to provide security for northern israel. Territorial depth is pointless against missiles is it not? And how long would an international force last with an iraq style insurgency fighting against it?
And the Israelis can't pull back without something kind of victory to show. But even emptying southern lebanon of people and fighting the Hezbollah all the way to baalbek would probably not break the organisation.
The Israelis with US suppport have managed to get themselves into a iraq style situation with no clear exit. In other words a quagmire.
Posted by: ckrantz | 24 July 2006 at 04:41 PM
"The Israelis have screwed themselves."
A leading Ha'aretz columnist points toward a similar conclusion, without the Col's frankness.
"Zvi Bar'el:
Winning the war is a function of defining targets of the war. If the war was meant to destroy Hezbollah then winning is unachievable. If the idea is to bring the captured soldiers back, then probably we could have done it without the war, through negotiations. And if the purpose is to have a neutral or demilitarized zone between Israel and Lebanon, then we need a very strong Lebanese partner, which is not yet there."
Posted by: John Howley | 24 July 2006 at 05:27 PM
It seems Gen. Halutz had the "plan" and Olmert/Peretz acquiesced. I have read other reports to that effect too where Olmert deferred to the military on the response strategy. It seems the decision to launch air attacks on Lebanon was made hastily without adequate debate on the potential alternatives. I suppose Olmert wanted to be seen as strong lest he be attacked by his domestic political rivals as being weak. From a domestic Israeli politics standpoint it has been a success with 80% approval ratings for the Kadima government. I wonder if those polls will have a similar trajectory to the Iraq invasion decision.
A voluntary putsch
Posted by: zanzibar | 24 July 2006 at 05:37 PM
Z,
that link doesn't work.
Posted by: confusedponderer | 25 July 2006 at 03:36 AM
Where I once worked, some of the senior officers with experience fighting the Israelis noted on the first day of this conflict that it was all about strengthening an inherently "weak Israeli government" as the expense of the "easy" Lebanese (civlian) target. In this regard, Tony Judt's recent editorial (in Ha'aretz) - Israel as the "teenager" - seems appropriate. Funny, his work predates the current fight by only a few weeks:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/711997.html
As less cheerleading and more realism enters into the Israeli news media and then into the world media, more of this meme(Olmert/Peretz caving to aggressive IDF leadership to bolster their own weak standing & lack of experience) will probably come to light. It is too convient for accountability-avoiding civilian politicians in Israel; laying blame on unelected military officers for the strategic, oeprational, and tactical debacle underway (which is on the path to being even worse than the 1982-2000 Lebanon fight) is much easier than standing upright and being accountable.
From where I sit, there is no reasonable success metric for Israel (as there is none in our quagmire known as Iraq) - only varying levels of current and future pain. How much pain depends really on the Israeli people (like the American people). Yeats wrote:
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."
Hopefully, some of the best can regain their conviction.
SP
Posted by: Serving Patriot | 25 July 2006 at 07:52 AM
Having an IDF chief with no direct ground combat experience may not be a great handicap given, what I see as Israel's limited military (but highly political objectives) in Lebanon.
My reading of Israeli strategy in Lebanon (with US agreement) is this:
Its seems that the Israelis intend only a limited air and ground offensive - to course some Hezbollah launch sites to become active - so they can be deteected and destroyed.
The broader bombing campaign (including Lebanon's capital) appears to be a way to create an international crisis that can only be "resolved" by ceasefire and the deployment of a much larger multinational force in south Lebanon (than the present UN force).
It appears Israel is not intending to create a significant buffer zone in south Lebanon. Therefore "reliance" will be placed on an effective multinational force to create a deep buffer zone.
Multinational forces have been unable to create lasting, effective buffer zones in this area before. This time there is the added difficulty of increasingly longe range Hezbollah rockets.
The required deeper, and consequently more sparsely manned, buffer zone will be doomed to fail sooner or later.
This failure will give Israel (and the US?) the green light to attack the sources of the rockets (already "officially" designated as Syria and Iran).
So the current Isreali strategy of limited reaction, then expectation of multinational force failure, are preliminaries for the (already justified) attack on Syria and Iran.
Somewhere in this gameplan is an appeal to the WMD threat, which may be justified in Iran's case.
Pete
http://spyingbadthings.blogspot.com
Posted by: Spooky Pete | 25 July 2006 at 11:25 AM
Pete
I think you are wrong. Israel's goals in this are massive and the "let's pee on them" methoda adopted thus far will fail and result in a major psychological and political defeat for Israel and us. pl
Posted by: W. Patrick Lang | 25 July 2006 at 11:40 AM
confusedponderer, I guess my editing did not work too well on that post. Below the link.
A voluntary putsch
Posted by: zanzibar | 25 July 2006 at 12:43 PM
Israel's goals in this are massive and the "let's pee on them" methoda adopted thus far will fail and result in a major psychological and political defeat for Israel and us.
Agreed. I have put some effort the last days into clearing myself of the smoke of this skirmish and to think ahead.
It will be a stalemate.
Israel runs out of moral ground and targets. The negotiations need to include Syria and the Shebaa Farms and Golan Hights issues and nobody has polital room to manoeuver on these.
Israel and the US have a major loss on all decisive moral grounds. The Lebansese have a major loss of another kind. Hezbollah will and Syria may gain.
The only way to avoid that now is to escalate. Attack Syria and the smoke of war will cover the defeat (and reveal the next one.)
I have documented the reasoning for this here:
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2006/07/endgame_stalema.html
Posted by: b | 25 July 2006 at 05:24 PM
Pat
It'll take months for our differing theories to be proven right or wrong. That is, months for a UN force to be fully deployed and convincingly "fail".
I think the Israelis are better judges (and planners) of the Lebanon scene than you give credit. They are willing to trade a calculated risk in Lebanon with the wider goals of eventual "justified" US/Israeli bombing of Syria and Lebanon.
Pete
Posted by: Spooky Pete | 26 July 2006 at 03:14 AM
CORRECTION
End of last line (above) should be "Syria and IRAN."
Pete
Posted by: Spooky Pete | 26 July 2006 at 03:15 AM
Spook
Pick a date by which we will know which is correct. pl
Posted by: W. Patrick Lang | 26 July 2006 at 07:32 AM
Pat
No problem. Any date before the November 2008 elections...
Naturally predicting exact dates for events months in the future defies the theatrical talents of even the most zealous CIA PhD.
You may well suspect that my predictions (possibilities?) are easily "true" if their timelines are between now and hell freezing over, but I think I have some feel for the subject.
The "announcement" of the failure of the multinational UN solution may occur in the form of an early morning Newsflash "Iran bombed by US/Israeli warplanes" in say, one year.
Pete
Posted by: Spooky Pete | 26 July 2006 at 08:03 AM
spook
Nobody is talking about a UN force.
You faith in Israeli judgment is misplaced. pl
Posted by: W. Patrick Lang | 26 July 2006 at 08:18 AM
z,
thanks for the link. Good read.
Posted by: confusedponderer | 26 July 2006 at 03:38 PM
Pat
We'll see. I'll respond in comments on your useful "Meltdown for US/Israeli Strategy" post.
Regards
Pete
Posted by: Spooky Pete | 26 July 2006 at 07:19 PM
According to Sunday Times(UK), Halutz announced “We’ve won the war.” on the very first day.
“All the long-range rockets have been destroyed,” Halutz announced proudly. After a short pause, he added four words that have since haunted him: “We’ve won the war.”
I nominated him as Hermann Goering Award 2006.
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