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July 29, 2006

Notes from Ferdy - Rocket Science on the Lebanon Border

Over on MSNBC the top story is Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah's latest explanation of his strategy in the Lebanon War. On Fox, he's making threats, On CNN, his tirade is four paragraphs down in a general story on the war, but we give CNN extra points for their sub-headline Civilians killed in Lebanon; rockets hit Israel.

Here's the key paragraph of the MSNBC story.

The bearded Shiite Muslim cleric, wearing his trademark black headdress, insisted Hezbollah fighters were winning the battle with Israel, now in its 18th day. Israel has not made a “single military accomplishment” in its offensive on Lebanon, he said, speaking on the group’s Al-Manar television.

He claimed Israel suffered a “serious defeat” in ground fighting around a Lebanese border town after Israeli troops pulled back Saturday afternoon. Israel said they left Bint Jbail because they accomplished their mission of wearing down Hezbollah fighters after a week of heavy battles.

Now, before we go on, it's important to remember that the Israeli Defense Force can pretty much go wherever it wants in Southern Lebanon. In the Fox News story about the pullback from Bint Jbail, they point out that in the bloodiest day of fighting, Israel lost 18 soldiers. That's a very small number for house-to-house urban combat.

Hezbollah and Israel are arguing over the number of actual terrorists killed (somewhere between 35 and 200), but the truth is, nobody can tell you which of the Lebanese victims of the fighting are terrorists or civilians. Furthermore, you can kill six terrorists today and twelve more can join tomorrow.

What Israel is really after is the rockets. That's why they're blowing up bridges (to keep new rockets from coming in) and searching for weapons dumps. The big question is whether the new long-range rockets believed to be from Iran were in Hezbollah's hands when the fighting started or if they're slipping through the Israeli blockades. If Hezbollah cannot be cut off from its sponsors in Iran and Syria, Hezbollah still has the option of driving entire sections of Israel into bomb shelters whenever it wants.

That's why any cease-fire agreement has to include some measure to stop the rockets. Not just now, not just for six months, but permanently, and well before Iran gets the ability to tip the rockets with nukes.

That's going to be a difficult goal to accomplish under the terms of the current rhetoric. Ironically, Israel has kept the deaths of its own civilians low because it has been facing Hezbollah belligerence for so long that bomb shelters are a normal part of most buildings. So, Israel looks like a big bully raining death on innocent Lebanese civilians, when in fact Israel is suffering mightily.

But whatever the rhetoric, the reality is first, last, and foremost the rockets. The rockets enable a military force operating in a neutral country to conduct a continuous undeclared war against a neighboring state, which is simply untenable. Even France would get belligerent if they were suffering periodic rocket attacks from a bunch of guerillas living in Spain.

We're in the phase where everybody wants a cease-fire. A cease-fire is useless unless it includes a workable method to dismantle the rockets. I'm pretty sure Israel understands this.

The rest of the world needs to understand it, too.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

# At Sat 3:51 PM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (3) | More Notes from Ferdy | Tags: CNN Hassan Nasrallah Hizbollah Iran Israel MSNBC Syria terrorism

Trackback Pings

» Pictures Showing The Cowardly Hezbollah from Flopping Aces
They are doing what they do best, killing innocent people. Their own people this time but it obviously matters not to them since they continue to do it. They must believe Israel will back off…..hopefully they will not get their wish. This figh... [Read More]

Tracked on July 29, 2006 11:17 PM

Comments

Posted by: Mike at July 30, 2006 9:42 AM

Posted by: KAOSKTRL at July 31, 2006 7:03 AM

Posted by: Ferdy at July 31, 2006 3:12 PM

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