Limited regret yields limited effect
Sunday, October 1, 2006 at 2:28PM Hezbollah's strategy of divide-and-conquer appears to be paying off. NATO troops won't be disarming anybody and that $900 m in reconstruction aid can't be spent in the areas most destroyed because the Lebanese government's writ doesn't extend there.ARTICLE: Ruined Towns Look to Beirut, Mostly in Vain, by By Michael Slackman, New York Times, October 1, 2006
Meanwhile, Hezbollah's certainly grows tighter, as Iran's oil money finds purchase there.
Bottom line: one side has fielded a solid SysAdmin force in southern Lebanon and the other side is MIA, afraid to pick a fight with the real power there. This is the outcome of Israel's employment of the defunct Powell Doctrine (pound hard conventionally, but avoid any ownership of the second half, declaring "victory" in your pullout).
Limited regret yields limited effect yields limited outcomes. Third-generation strategy for a Fourth-generation war. Such is the state of our "wisdom" (and "wise men").
Hezbollah and Iran continue to size our SysAdmin force--if anyone cares to notice.
Reader Comments (1)
Clearly we're not in an ideal situation but I would adopt a bit more balanced observation than the NYT article. The Shia are not going to vote for Sunni or christian parties. They are going to vote for Amal or Hezbollah in the next election and that's the power struggle that is relevant for the shia of s. Lebanon. So what's Amal up to? We have no clue from this article.
Iran is forcing its people to go through gas lines as it sends buckets of money to Lebanon and they seem to be pulling out of the international finance system, losing income and financial diversification in exchange for the short term use of cash. On balance is that a positive or negative thing for Iran? Again, no clue so far.
4th generation war aggressors are always going to have the advantage on reconstruction because they're going to be able to set this up in advance of hostilities while the defense is going to have to set up at least part of it on the fly after combat stops. Who is going to spend reconstruction money honestly is a difficult question to answer in the Gap. I'm not sure that 1 month out of any 4th generation violent spasm that the defense will ever be ahead of a properly planned offense.
This does not mean that defense always loses but rather that it's going to have a tougher job and needs to find 2nd mover advantage in the process. We haven't done that yet and going over the process in Lebanon will likely be a good case study for how to do it in future.