Another Failure of Feith

The map is slightly altered from the original at the BBC page: Middle East crisis: Key maps. I had a hard time telling the difference between the Israeli and Hezbollah strikes in their color scheme.

The Israeli attack pattern is interesting. They seem to be concentrating their attacks on the areas of Lebanon where Hezbollah isn’t. You would think that they would bomb the areas where the rockets are being launched at Israeli civilians. When I was selecting targets, it was sort of a given that you bombed where the enemy was, not where the enemy wasn’t.

This looks a lot like “Rummy think” – the targets are easier find in the north, even if the enemy is in the south. That’s apparently why Rummy wanted to attack Iraq instead of Afghanistan, where the enemy was located.

The BBC has one of their In Depth pages up for the conflict, and they are always a nice resource.

Both the BBC’s article, Israel’s Hezbollah headache, and Billmon’s post, Military Hubris, deal with the problems of the Israeli military in dealing with Hezbollah and Hamas. After watching the “new” IDF in action, I don’t think the US should be seeking “terrorism” advice from Israel.

Israel apparently missed the new weapons, and doesn’t seem to be able to arrange for the type of aerial reconnaissance that has been in use since the American Civil War for spotting artillery fire and rocket launches. With aerial supremacy, every launch of a rocket should be met with an attack on the launch site, but this isn’t happening. I get a feeling that the IDF is not able to sustain the Gaza and Lebanon operations at the same time.

Coincidentally, today is Douglas Feith birthday. Feith is not stupid, as Tommy Franks believes; he is an ideologue. The practical effect is the same, but Feith’s defect is self-imposed. His father was a prominent member of Betar which is part of the Revisionist Zionism movement.

People should read about the Revisionist Zionism movement, because it makes them aware that Likud and the other derivatives of RZ really have a bit of gall calling anyone else terrorists. More than a few members of the movement have appeared on wanted posters around the world. Refusing to talk to terrorists or thugs eliminates almost every government in the Middle East.

As Billmon posits, the current leadership of Israel has forgotten its terrorist roots and doesn’t know how to respond.