Would Assad really be able to get Iran to push Hezbollah into bombarding Israel if we attack Syria?
Hezbollah has committed part of their ground forces to the Syrian civil war and so would be at a disadvantage if Israel strikes on the ground. Can Hezbollah count on Israel responding to Hezbollah's response only through air attacks? I don't think so.
In the past, I've figured that Israel learned from their 2006 war with Hezbollah when they tried to rely on air power and then turned to too few inadequately prepared and poorly employed ground troops.
If Hezbollah goes to bat for Assad by throwing themselves at Israel, even with anti-rocket defenses Israel can't simply sit and take bombardment while hoping their defenses keep rockets from hitting civilians and critical targets and that air strikes pound Hezbollah enough to end the war.
Hezbollah has too many rockets and Israel has too few defensive missiles to make that work for Israel.
So Israel will need to use ground forces aggressively to occupy the rocket-launch sites and rocket storage positions to halt the barrage.
And Israel will need to move deep into Lebanon to really inflict pain on the command-and-control and logistics rear of Hezbollah to make it tougher to rebuild their positions on the Israeli border.
I expect the Israelis to go all the way north to Baalbek. And I expect the Israelis to use airborne forces to help trap and disrupt Hezbollah while mechanized columns roll north.
A year and a half ago, the Israelis practiced a drop of over 1,000 paratroopers.
This summer the Israelis did it again, for only the second time in the last 15 years:
The Israel Defense Forces Paratroopers Brigade conducted a parachuting drill this week to simulate an operation deep in enemy territory. Some 1,200 paratroopers took part in the drill, which began Wednesday morning and was intended to train combatants to advance and attack in battle.
I missed this at the time, but recently noticed that Israeli paratroopers were exercising in the Golan Heights. I wondered if this was a parachute drill so looked and found the July training exercise.
So the Israelis are serious about this. Where else would this capability be useful? In Syria it would be a drop in the bucket just as it would be for our ready battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division, although I can't rule out that Israel might drop paratroopers on a chemical weapons site as long as ground troops were moving to relieve them.
Lebanon seems like the real place for paratroopers. Dropped ahead of an invasion force, paratroopers could seize choke points to enable a faster drive north by mechanized forces (tanks and infantry in armored vehicles) supported by helicopter-mobile infantry. This could tear up Hezbollah's forces and infrastructure in the southern part of Lebanon.
Or, if Syria managed to slip small amounts of chemical weapons to Hezbollah, Israel really could mount a successful drop to seize that site while other forces move to relieve them.
And of course if Iran got involved directly, that just gives Israel an excuse to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities.
This doesn't mean that Syria or Iran won't respond to even an incredibly small American attack on Syria. But whatever our enemies do, the responses to the responses could be incredibly large.
There. I feel better writing about actual military issues rather than banging my head against the wall over the cluster-orgy taking place within the Washington beltway about Syria.
